The narrative elements that form the framework of Anne’s Diary of a Young Girl are as prosaic and as grotesque as those that animate the darkest fairy tales.
A young girl, wise and compassionate, and her family go into hiding in Amsterdam during the Second World War, desperate to evade the Nazis who occupy their adopted country; the girl and those in hiding with her are eventually betrayed (by a person or persons still, to this day, unknown) and are sent to concentration camps; most of her former companions die—or rather, are murdered by Nazis and their willing proxies along with millions of other Jews and “undesirables” in the coming years; Anne Frank herself is only 15 years old when she dies at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, one month before Allied troops liberate the camp.
These and other wrenching elements of Anne’s tale, imparted in the clear, unsentimental prose of her famous diary, are now part of the shared memory of disparate cultures all over the world.
Here, LIFE commemorates Anne’s unconquerable spirit and bears witness to the suffering unleashed by the Third Reich through a story that began with one seemingly incongruous photograph: a picture of children playing in a sandbox in Amsterdam in 1937.
LIFE magazine set the scene, and explained the significance of the sandbox photograph, in its October 12, 1959, issue:
The snapshot . . . adds a fascinating footnote to the Anne Frank legend. LIFE photographer Paul Schutzer found it when he was thumbing through a family album in the home of Maryland friends. “One familiar face caught my eye,” he recalls, “and I realized it was Anne Frank.”
His hostess, Mrs. Barbara Rodbell, who is in the snapshot, told him it had been taken by her mother in Amsterdam in 1937. She had heard from most of the other girls since the war and, with her help, Schutzer set out to track them down. One had died, like Anne, in a concentration camp—Barbara’s own sister, Susanne. On a 21,000-mile journey, Schutzer found the three others and recorded their lives 22 years after the snapshot.
Each of the women is now happily married and raising children. Meanwhile their childhood friend’s fame continues to grow. Her “Diary” has now sold 3.5 million copies. . . . [Note: Today that number has grown to more than 30 million copies. Ed.] Mrs. Rodbell, living now in contented obscurity, feels that, for most of the girls in the snapshot at least, a remark from one of Anne’s last entries has come true: “I think that it will all come out all right, this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
LIFE.com offers these photographs—many of which never ran in LIFE magazine—made by Paul Schutzer during his deeply personal trek into the past.
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Left to right: Hanneli Goslar (a.k.a., “Lies Goosens” in early editions of the Diary), Anne Frank, Dolly Citroen, Hannah Toby, Barbara Ledermann and Susanne Ledermann (standing), Amsterdam, 1937.
Anne Frank Fonds/Anne Frank House via Shutterstock
The former Barbara Ledermann, she escaped from the Nazis in the Netherlands, lived with the underground, and met the man she would marry, Martin Rodbell, in the U.S. in 1947. Her parents and her sister, Susanne, died at Auschwitz.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Barbara Ledermann, now Mrs. Martin Rodbell, in Maryland, 1958.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Barbara Ledermann, now Mrs. Martin Rodbell, in Maryland, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Barbara Ledermann, now Mrs. Martin Rodbell, with her family in Maryland, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Barbara Ledermann, now Mrs. Martin Rodbell, 1959. “When she and her husband went to the Anne Frank movie,” LIFE wrote, “she stood debating whether to go in. Finally she decided not to. ‘I’ve seen too much human suffering already,’ she said.”
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hannah, whose husband, Ronald Marsh, was a California law student. The former Hannah Toby, she was fourth from the left in the sandbox picture; it was in her back yard that the group picture was taken.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hannah Marsh and family, Los Angeles, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hannah Marsh and family, Los Angeles, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hannah Marsh and child, Los Angeles, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The girl who was third from left in the sandbox photo, then Dolly Citroen, was shown with her husband, Shmuel Shoshan, and three of their four kids, on a picnic outside Jerusalem.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Dolly Citroen, now married to Shmuel Shoshan, in Israel, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Dolly Citroen with one of her four children, Israel, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Dolly Citroen with her family, Israel, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hanneli Goslar (a.k.a., “Lies Goosens” in early editions of the Diary) was Anne’s closest friend in Amsterdam. Also taken by the Nazis, she met her old playmate at Bergen-Belsen in 1945, not long before Anne died. “She was in rags,” Hanneli told LIFE. “I saw her emaciated face in the darkness.”
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Hanneli Goslar, now married to Dr. Walter Pinchas, in Jerusalem with her family, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Hanneli Goslar, now married to Dr. Walter Pinchas, in Jerusalem with her family, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The former Hanneli Goslar, now married to Dr. Walter Pinchas, in Jerusalem with her family, 1959.
Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hanneli and Dolly, childhood friends of Anne Frank, with their children in Jerusalem, 1959.
For years, from its inception in 1937 until the early ’60s, the prestigious Daytona 200 motorcycle race wasn’t merely run at Daytona Beach. Along with other high-speed, high-risk clashes, the 200 was run on Daytona Beach.
In 1948, LIFE magazine covered the races, both amateur and pro, at Daytona (the Road Course opened in 1936) and reported, in its April 19 issue, that “for four days last month the resort city of Daytona Beach could hardly have been noisier or in more danger if it had been under bombardment.”
Here, seven decades later, LIFE.com opens a window on that long, loud weekend that thrilled racing fans; slightly scandalized one very popular weekly magazine’s editors; and, as if proof was needed that the young sport was still in the hands of rebels and scofflaws, saw two people killed and 30 more injured in the midst of all the high-octane fun.
The 1948 event, which attracted “375 helmeted daredevils and plenty of non-racing hell-raisers,” was marred not only by deaths and injuries but, as LIFE duly noted, by classic knuckleheadism. “Because the antics of an unruly minority reflect on the dignity of motorcycling,” the magazine observed, “the American Motorcycle Association may hire special police at future races. One duty will be to restrain sophomoric cyclists who amused themselves this year by tossing firecrackers into the crowd.”
Ultimately, as LIFE tersely reported, “155 motorcycles started, only 45 finished. Winning rider, Floyd Emde, averaged 84 mph, got $2,000.” What LIFE failed to mention is that Emde (who was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998) won by the sliver-thin margin of 12 seconds; 1948 was the first time a rider led the race from flag to flag; and it was the last time an Indian Motorcycle won the 200.
Daytona 200 weekend, 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Motorcycles in Daytona
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach, Florida, March 1948.
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Motorcycles Race in Florida 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200, 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200, 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach, Florida, March 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach, Florida, March 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 weekend, 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach, Florida, March 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 Motorcycle Race in Florida
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Fans watching the races at Daytona
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach, March 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A Racer Steers his motorcycle
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 Weekend, 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona 200 Winner Floyd Emde
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Daytona Beach 1948
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Motorcycle Club Daytona 200
Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Being an Oscar winner is the ultimate in status, but the Oscar award is also physical thing in itself—one that that stands 13-and-a-half inches high, weighs eight-and-a-half pounds and presents a question to its owner. That question: what are you going to do with me?
The first and most obvious answer is to pose for pictures together. Every winner does that—though some hold the statuette professionally, while others cuddle with it as if it was a puppy. But what then? In these photos, Elizabeth Taylor takes hers to the party, Vivien Leigh places hers on the mantlepiece, Joan Fontaine sets hers up on a workdesk, and Jimmy Stewart totes his along to the family hardware store, where he casually sets it on a display case while he catches up with an old friend.
Even after the awards are handed out, the show goes on.
Vivien Leigh placed the Oscar she won for her role as Scarlett in Gone With The Wind on her mantlepiece at home, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Luise Rainer, the first woman to win two Oscars, held her Best Actress award for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld during the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony.
Rex Hardy Jr./Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Joan Fontaine did the household bookkeeping next to the Oscar she won for her role in Hitchcok’s Suspicion, 1942.
Bob Landry/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Elizabeth Taylor at a Hollywood party with the Oscar she won for her role in Butterfield, 1961.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Grace Kelly with the Oscar she won for her role in The Country Girl, 1955. William Holden, her co-star in the movie, stood behind her.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Audrey Hepburn with the Oscar she won for Roman Holiday, 1954.
Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Joanne Woodward smiled radiantly while holding her Best Actress Oscar for her role in Three Faces of Eve, 1958.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress winners Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed (both for From Here to Eternity) and their Oscars, 1954.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Academy Awards: Classic Film Stars With Their Oscars
Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gloria Grahame with her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful, 1953.
Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Marlon Brando (right) with his Oscar for On the Waterfront, 1955.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Onstage presenters seen from the wings during the 1950 Academy Awards.
Ida Wyman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jimmy Stewart, back from WWII, talked with the oldest employee of his family’s hardware store in Pennsylvania, George Little; nearby is a table of various mementos, including Stewart’s Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story.
Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Joan Crawford with her Best Actress Oscar for Mildred Pierce, 1946.
Every February, in the very depths of winter, Sports Illustrated unveils its storied swimsuit issue. And when that issue comes out, the media print, online, TV, radio, semaphore, you name it, takes notice. There are, one can state with a certain degree of confidence, several reasons for the attention that the swimsuit issue garners:
First: It seems the women are quite attractive.
Second: The bathing suits, while barely there, evidently appeal to a number of people perhaps even to women.
Third: The swimsuit issue has a surprisingly long history especially in the magazine world where, with a few notable exceptions, franchises come and go with dismaying rapidity.
Finally: There are the women. Wait . . . perhaps we mentioned that already?
Here, in tribute to SI’s swimsuit issue, and in recognition that in its own way LIFE magazine also took pains to chronicle youthful frolics in sand and surf, LIFE.com presents a series of photos made by Co Rentmeester in California in 1970.
There’s a certain innocence about these pictures that signals, right away, that they were made long, long ago. Sure, it’s California in the post-Manson, post-Altamont years, when the California Dream was souring and the airy promises of the Sixties were fading. But even the onslaught of hard drugs and pseudo-revolutionary nihilism that subsumed much of the counterculture in the early “70s could not entirely wipe away what had always drawn people to the Golden State. Namely, an uncomplicated joy in the pleasures of sunshine, sensuality and the illusion of eternal youth.
And if the California Dream really is just that: a dream? Well, honestly who cares?
CALIFORNIA GIRLS
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
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Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
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Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
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Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
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Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
California, 1970.
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
California, 1970.
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
California, 1970.
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
California, 1970.
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
California, 1970.
Co Rentmeester / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
It’s mid-spring, 1961. In the kitchen of a safe house in Montgomery, Ala., Martin Luther King Jr. is tense. In the house with the 32-year-old civil rights leader are 17 students—fresh-faced college kids who, moved by King’s message of racial equality, are putting their lives at risk. These are the groundbreaking practitioners of nonviolent civil disobedience known as the Freedom Riders, and over the past two harrowing weeks, as they’ve traveled across the state on integrated buses, their numbers have diminished at every stop in the face of arrests, mob beatings, and even fire-bombings.
Right there along with the riders, capturing the mood of the movement as it swung between exhilarated and exhausted, thrilled and terrified, was 26-year-old LIFE photographer Paul Schutzer. He had covered the landmark Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom march and rally in Washington, D.C., four years earlier and had witnessed firsthand the courage and determination Dr. King inspired in his followers. Filed along with Schutzer’s Pilgrimage photos in LIFE’s archives are notes from the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, Henry Suydam Jr., citing the energy and excitement that swirled around King: “At the end of the ceremonies, a couple of hundred people pressed feverishly on Reverend King seeking pictures, autographs, handshakes, or just a close look. The jam got so heavy that he had to be escorted to safety by police.”
Here, decades after the Freedom Riders put their lives on the line for dignity and equal rights, LIFE.com presents photos from that heady era in U.S. history, most of which never ran in LIFE magazine. Here are pictures, from the rides and the safe houses, charting a pivotal moment in the journey of Dr. King himself and in the nation-changing movement he led, from the monuments of Washington to the highways, rural roads, churches and bus depots of the Jim Crow American South.
Julia Aaron and David Dennis, along with 25 other freedom riders and several members of the National Guard, travelled from Montgomery, Ala., to Jackson, Miss.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Just shy of the Mississippi-Alabama border, members of the Alabama National Guard surrounded a bus carrying freedom riders.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A freedom rider and member of the National Guard on a bus in the Deep South.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The view from a bus window on a freedom ride.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders peered from bus windows during a stop.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A congregation in Alabama prayed for the safety of freedom riders.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders sang at the Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., as a white mob gathered outside.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A weary Martin Luther King Jr. sat at the Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., as a white mob surrounded the building.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders tried to rest at the Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., as a white mob gathered outside.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
After U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy intervened, forcing Alabama Governor John Patterson to declare martial law and send in the National Guard, the white mob outside First Baptist Church finally broke up. Before dawn on May 22, 1961, the Guard moved the congregation out.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders rescued from First Baptist Church relaxed at a safe house in Montgomery, Ala.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders rescued from First Baptist Church (including future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, with bandaged head) relaxed at a safe house in Montgomery, Ala.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders, along with Martin Luther King Jr., relaxed at a safe house in Montgomery, Ala.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
At a safe house in Montgomery, Ala., freedom riders relaxed after being rescued from First Baptist Church.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
At a safe house in Montgomery, Ala., freedom riders prayed after being rescued from First Baptist Church.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders waited to board a bus to Jackson, Miss.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged freedom riders as they boarded a bus for Jackson, Miss.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders and members of the National Guard on a bus in the Deep South.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders on a bus in the Deep South.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Freedom riders on a bus in the Deep South.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
White segregationists hurled stones at a bus carrying freedom riders in Mississippi.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A young freedom rider on a bus in the Deep South.
Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In 1939 LIFE noticed that youngsters around the country were, in increasing numbers, playing football under the aegis of organized leagues. But one Colorado league, in particular, caught the eye of LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. As the magazine told its readers in its Oct. 9, 1939, issue:
In Denver this fall, the daydreams of some 550 youngsters, 8 to 18 years old, are coming true. These schoolboys are all members of a non-school organization called the Young America League, which is teaching them to play regular eleven-man football. It is much more fun than scrimmaging in a backyard. When they play for the League, they have their own brightly colored uniforms. Regular coaches teach them to block and tackle. Every Saturday they play regular games, and sometimes 4,000 people come to watch them. With such experience, they figure, they are sure to be great football heroes when they go to college.
The League was started in 1927 when a distracted Denverite named Frederic Adams was entertaining two young nephews. He created an athletic club and arranged for the kids to play football. An essential feature was that every boy, regardless of ability, would have a chance to play. The idea spread and branch clubs were formed. Today the League claims to have the world’s youngest organized football players.
The kids also love the initiation. A candidate swears to be a good student and not bully the girls. Then he must say: “I promise to remember that what matters most is courage; that it is no disgrace to be beaten; but that the great disgrace is to turn yellow.”
Courage is a good thing. Not bullying girls — or boys, or anyone — is a good thing. Being a good student is, generally speaking, a good thing. Sounds like the Young America League might have been on to something.
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Young America League Football, 1939
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock