Anne Frank on YouTube

The only known film footage of diarist Anne Frank was released for the first time on the Internet Wednesday, allowing audiences worldwide access to the young girl's "educational power and message of tolerance," according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The black-and-white images of the then 12-year-old Anne are part of a collaboration between Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House museum and YouTube: the launch of a channel devoted to Frank, who famously chronicled her life with her family as they hid from Nazis in Amsterdam.

Besides the Anne footage – 20 seconds shot before a neighbor’s July 1941 wedding, showing Anne leaning out a window in Amsterdam – the channel features interviews with her father, Otto Frank, and other people who knew her before she died in 1945 at Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp in northern Germany. One notable clip: Nelson Mandela talking about the strength he derived from Anne’s diary during his own imprisonment. (Click here to visit the channel.)

Previously, the footage of Anne herself was only available to visitors at the museum in Amsterdam.

"With the Anne Frank Channel on YouTube, people around the world will be able to explore the life and significance of Anne Frank through unique images," the Anne Frank House said in a statement.

The YouTube channel also features a preview of the Anne Frank House virtual museum, which will launch April 28 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the bricks-and-mortar museum.

Anne began her diary shortly after her 13th birthday, chronicling her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944, just before her family’s hiding place was betrayed and the family was deported to concentration camps. Anne’s diary first was published in 1947, and has since been translated into 70 languages.

Mascha Driessen, head of YouTube and display at Google in the Netherlands, told the Christian Science Monitor: "We hope this YouTube channel will help broaden the reach of the Anne Frank House, its educational power and its message of tolerance."

Photo courtesy Mr. History via Flickr.