Anne Frank and the System That Killed Her

Anne Frank was fifteen years old when she died during the Holocaust.In this episode we tell Anne Frank’s story, although not case with one clear perpetrator, it is a true crime story carried out by laws, bureaucracy, obedience, and silence.We follow Anne’s life from her childhood in Germany, her family’s escape to the Netherlands, the years spent in hiding in the Secret Annex, and the events that followed her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.This episode also examines how ordinary people can become part of extreme harm, including a look at the famous Milgram obedience experiments and what they reveal about authority, responsibility, and compliance.This is not a story about a single act of violence — but about how persecution becomes normalized, and how systems can make cruelty feel ordinary.Content warning: This episode discusses persecution, deportation, and the death of a child during the Holocaust.