Anne Frank’s publisher dies

A LITERARY editor who rescued Anne Frank’s diary from a US publisher’s rejection pile has died.

Judith Jones played a key role in bringing the Jewish teenager’s writings to the world.

The diary was written in Amsterdam while Frank was hiding from the Nazis between June 1942 and August 1944. It was first published in the Netherlands in 1947, but became a sensation after Jones recognised its merit while working in Paris. She died yesterday aged 93 at her home in Vermont.

She worked for Knopf Doubleday Publishing for more than 50 years and only retired in 2011. ‘Judith was a legend in book publishing,’ said Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief.

Frank, pictured, who was born in Germany and lived with her family in the Netherlands, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged 15, just months before the war ended.