Anne Frank; THE UNSEEN PICTURES EXCLUSIVE A FATHER'S IMAGES OF HIS FAMILY, KILLED IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP.

Byline: By DAMIEN FLETCHER

THE little girl on the far right of this smiling trio is seven years old. Today she would be 77. But her name is Anne Frank and less than a decade after this snap was taken she would die in a frozen Nazi concentration camp, aged 15.

Anne, whose diaries revealed the true human cost of the Holocaust, was among the 1.5 million Jewish children systematically murdered by the Third Reich on an industrial scale. Eighteen thousand died alongside her in March 1945 alone at Bergen-Belsen, Germany.

The photos on these pages - recently found in archives and on display in Britain for the first time - were lovingly taken by her father Otto.

They document Anne's short life before she was forced to hide in a secret attic in Amsterdam in a vain attempt to escape the invading Nazis.

The Franks - Otto, Anne's mum Edith and sister Margot - had already fled Frankfurt in 1929, when Anne was five.

Seeing the photographs, Anne's 80-year-old cousin Buddy Elias remembers how full of life she was.

Buddy, who lives in Basle, Switzerland, says: "These pictures help remind us all what a happy, intelligent and energetic child she was.

"I still think about her every day, my memories are so vivid.

"The last time I saw her was 1938. She came to visit and I put on a puppet show for her, which she loved.

"We both loved skating, so it was terrible for her when the Nazis said Jewish people were not allowed to skate. She wrote me letters about how unhappy she was and that she wanted to go skating.

"That is very sad for me when I read those letters again, knowing what had happened to her."

For Hanneli Goslar in Israel the pictures bring back happy pre-war memories.

She says: "We met in 1934 when both our families had to leave Germany.

"We were in the grocery store. My mother and Anne's mother started to speak German because they didn't know Dutch.

"When my mother brought me to kindergarten the next day I didn't know anybody.

"Then I saw Anne, she was making music with bells. She turned and ran into my arms and I ran into hers.

From then on we were friends. "We played hopscotch, marbles, and jump rope and you can see in these pictures how happy she was."

Hanneli smiles: "My mother would say, 'God knows everything, but Anne knows everything better.'"

However, with the outbreak of war genocide was unleashed on Europe and the Franks were trapped. Jacqueline van Maarsen, another of Anne's friends, lives with husband Ruud, 76, in Amsterdam.

The 77-year-old says: "Anne and I had to wear the yellow star on our arms and we were both frightened when we saw the German soldiers in the streets.

"We couldn't go to the park or the swimming pool, only to school and then straight back home."

When they found all the Jews would have to leave the country to "work" in Germany, the pair made a pact. Jacqueline says: "We promised that we would write a farewell letter if one of us had to leave."

But when her family went into hiding, Anne's dad would not let her write one in case it led the Nazis to them.

Jacqueline says: "I believed Anne's family had moved to Switzerland, but that was just their cover story.

"I went into their empty house and searched for the letter and I was very disappointed that it wasn't there. I was sad that I'd lost my friend but I thought I would see her when the war was over.

"Instead her father came alone to our house years later and told us he'd been the only survivor from the family.

"He cried a lot and often came to our house to talk to me about Anne."

The family had been in hiding in secret rooms over her father's office since 1942 - they stayed there for two years.

On the outside, Hanneli and her family were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Tragically the Franks were betrayed and sent to the same camp.

Amazingly the girls were reunited briefly in that terrible place.

Hanneli says: "It was February 1945 and I found out there were Dutch people in a part of the camp separated by a barbed-wire fence.

"The punishment for talking to prisoners on the other side could be death but I was desperate to speak to someone from home."

ONE freezing evening, Hanneli crept to the wire and whispered into the fence.

She heard a voice softly ask, "Who are you?" in Dutch.

The woman she spoke to was a Frank family friend - and soon she was speaking to Anne. Hanneli remembers: "Standing on either side of the barbed wire we were both overcome with emotion and began to cry."

Anne explained that she thought her parents were dead and her sister was dying. In fact, only her mother was dead. But Margot, aged 19, would die in the days that followed. Of the Franks, only Otto would walk out of Bergen-Belsen - he died in 1980.

Anne was emaciated amd starving. Hanneli put together a package of food and threw it over the fence - at the risk of on-the-spot executions.

She says: "I was scared. A German guard was in a watchtower at the top of the fence and he would have shot me and Anne too."

Anne caught the food parcel and disappeared into the darkness. It was their last farewell.

Hanneli admits softly: "I still have nightmares about that. When my kids were small I was always worried when they went away that they wouldn't come back."

An exhibition of these touching family photos is on in London.

Show curator Rian Verhoven says: "Looking at these photographs of happy little girls, and knowing what happened afterwards, you see them in a different light.

"Usually these childhood pictures would have represented the start of a young life, but instead many of them document her final years of life."

The photos are part of the Anne Frank + You exhibition at St Paul's _Cathedral, London, to June 12.

For further information call the Anne Frank Trust UK on 020 7284 5858.

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CAPTION(S):

ALL SMILES: Playing in sand' BRIGHT LITTLE THING: Anne was clever at school' SLEEPING BEAUTY: Anne aged two at home in bed' GREAT OUTDOORS: On hols in Switzerland at six' BEACH BABY: In her costume and cap at the seaside, 1934' PLAYING AT MUMS: Seven-year-old Anne on the right and friends take their dolls for a stroll in the sun' DADDY'S GIRLS: Left, with mum Edith and sister Margot in Frankfurt