The diary Of Anne Frank


Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?*

Before you start reading Anne Frank’s diary, you must make yourself aware of the fate the people in Anne’s life met. If it wasn't for that, one could have dismissed some parts of the diary as ramblings of a fifteen years old, but once we remember that these kids never grew up to live the life they deserve, we feel more for them.

At every step, you are reminded of fact that Anne is soon going to die, and all those ramblings and day dreams she is writing about are going to end with that. She wished to be a writer, a lady that mattered but none of that is ever going to come good.

It is this loss which is felt by the reader despite the fact that Anne herself remains innocent of her fate. It is at times like these, the very word ‘life’ seems to be too inadequate to represent what it stands for.

These are the people that those who advocate the war never met – if it wasn't for works like Anne, they would had been lost as mere numbers.

Yes, there are a lot of complaints and most of Anne’s ‘Dear Kitty’ moments are ones felt by everyone in teenage but she is able to draw a picture of the atmosphere they are confined to. People who are forced to live in a closed space and have to deal with each other continuously will always develop complaints against each other.

By the end, though she seems to be finding a rare clarity of thought – it is as if those jumbled thoughts which she rambles at the beginning are now arranging themselves into poetry.

*

The most beautiful aspect of the diary is her sheer honesty. She starts her diary with following words:

“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”

I almost feel guilty in reading it – the guilt of intruding someone’s persona life, despite the fact that she is long dead and her father had chosen to publish it. She becomes real to you across time and space and it is this guilt which sits heavily on your heart while reading it- let alone reviewing it.

Her honesty has enabled her to draw a picture of her life – you could feel the writer growing in pages, her psychological developments and passions. This is something that fiction will probably never achieve – surly not in that complete manner.

(*Title of review is quoting Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss))

3.5/5 ⭐

An undeniable classic at this point, a simple story of innocence denied, heartbreaking in a childish manner. It will make you feel all sorts of contradictory feelings by the end.

I happened to read several diaries, and almost every time I didn't get rid of this feeling : How honest can you be, after all, with yourself, in a journal that you know will be published, a diary which is and is not just yours ?
What percentage can we imagine, associating the life of the character in the pages of such a diary - with the real reality ? Pretty much, I think, but not totally, any diary also leaves room for projection, for fictionalization.
Well, that wasn't the case, here.Anne, in the Amsterdam hideout, writes only for her.It's the only way out.
Anne writes to herself with the double " Kitty ".Reading the pages, realizing that you are reading Literature, which this 13-year-old girl is able to do naturally, reviewing the documentary of the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, the feeling created is one of bitterness. Kitty is Anne, and Anne would die, Anne writes, Anne has observations and an ambition that make you feel small, that make you to be ashamed of your old diaries. Reading this book , you're feel at the same time so small, and so big, in front of what we call History, Life. The 13-year-old girl synthesizes and overcomes a reality in front of which many adults would break their hands in agony, hysteria, despair, which happens under her eyes.
At the same time, it seems useless to me, even a snobbery, to judge this text literary, to interpret it. It's all a macabre drama, of which only his father, Otto Frank survived.
Anne's diary becomes the best-known testimony of a World War II Jewish victim. This diary is shoking, it created the feeling of watching a death live, a death on credit, like as you go to a movie, and no matter how much you like the character, you know it just as well that it's just a projection of you, that he's going to die, very soon.
I've never had a harder test of what I read, like in this book.

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We have all heard about or read this book. I remember reading it in high-school as a project. And since I never had written a proper book review, I decided to read it again.

I went to the library, and they only had the short Penguin version, with the most important diary entries of Anne Frank. It is only 65 pages. So, I decided to also grab another book – The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer, so I can write a full overview.

This is a diary of a young girl, and she was writing these stories during two years of hiding. Anne Frank and her family are Jews and they live in The Netherlands. After the Germans invade, many people are captured and go to designated camps. A few manage to escape and go into hiding. Anne’s family hides in her father’s office.

If you are reading this diary, without knowing anything about history – this could be a happy story. These diary entries are filled with love and hope, dreams of a young girl, beliefs, opinions, descriptions of her first crush and planning a future.

n  But this is not a happy story. This girl doesn’t get the chance to grow up. This girl doesn’t get the chance to experience freedom, and live to get to know her grandchildren. This is a sad story of not just Anne Frank, but all these people that have gone through that painful journey.n

While this book deserves to be read by every person, and this history needs to keep being told many years after us, I feel the need to make a proper book review.

This is not a well-written book, with a great plot and amazing description. So based on that, this doesn’t stand up to the standards. But this book has a meaning that makes up for all the amateur writing. After all, this was a teenager writing it, without even knowing this will someday be shared with the world.

To all of you that haven’t read it yet – I highly recommend it. If you don’t want to go with the long version, read the short Penguin one, like I did.

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come ON, how can anyone give ANNE FRANK a rating other than "it was amazing"??? some of these reviews cracked me up. it's certainly not my favorite book, but i definitely won't say it's a pity vote either. although i'll say this: i was recently at her house and was SHOCKED that it's HUGE. i mean, the diary makes it sound like they're living in a matchbox when even the hideaway part is two stories and far bigger than anywhere i've ever lived--FRANKly (HA!) i don't know how it took anyone that long after the house was seized to realize that some floors were missing when you entered it... stupid nazis... once my good friend told my other good friend's young girlfriend that she looked astonishingly like anne frank. the girl freaked out and made a huge, public scene about how horrifying that was but everyone saw it, the resemblance i mean, a little bit anyway. but on the topic of seizure, the girl was shortly afterwards committed for attempted suicide. which wasn't a surprise and i'm fairly certain was wholly unrelated to the comment. much like the qualitative relationship of half of my reviews to their books...sorry.

4.25|5 || The Read Harder Challenge 2018 - A book published posthumously ||

One of the most important and moving books I’ve ever read.
I adored charming and witty Anne. She managed to do what so many others never accomplish in their writings: she brought me into her world without any effort. Her voice resonated in my head and heart every day since I’ve started this book. She feels like a close friend, like part of the family. Moreover, I was impressed of how emotionally intelligent she is, how much she grows up in such a short time.
And through the whole book my heart was broken because I knew the end. The unfairness of life, the wrongdoings of so many other people, actually the whole climate which got Anne and her family and millions other killed, all of these are despicable. And it’s even more unbearable to think that all happened just a few decades ago.
I’m emotional thinking about Anne and I know that the connection that I have with this book will not disappear any time soon. It will stay with me for years to come.

4.5****

Beauty remains, even in misfortune.

The Diary of a Young Girl as told by Anne Frank is haunting, poignant and beautiful, with a keen sense of hope throughout. Anne documented her family's plight of having to go into hiding in 1942 due to the German invasion in the Netherlands as part of WW2. The Franks were hidden in a secret annexe, behind a bookcase covering a hidden entrance. Not only were the Franks living there, but also another four people. During this time all members of the hidden annexe were not allowed to go outside and had strict rules to follow (can't light candles at all times, can't use the toilet at certain times, etc.). With eight people living consistently in this secret annexe, it is inevitable that tensions arise both within the Frank family and with the other members living under the same roof.

Anne highlights through out her diary how lucky she was with the people that helped her and her family go into hiding (for example, Miep and Bep). The members of the annex played a secret radio that told them of the news and advancements in the war, and were able to hear from those who helped, what was happening to other Jewish people in their community (the disappearances, the killings). Anne weaves her diary going in between typical teenage experiences (hormones, puberty, crushes, family tensions) and the horror of having to be hidden (black market ration books, low money, not being able to go outside). However, even though Anne had to live in constant fear of being found by the Gestapo and constant gun fire surrounding the building, her diary always holds an essence of hope and beauty. She writes about the future, what will happen after the war, when she can attend school again, and her dreams of being a writer.

I want to go on living even after my death!

Anne’s diary will (hopefully) forever be read by many, documenting the years spent in secret of an unbelievably smart and brave young woman.

The problem with Diary of a Young Girl is that it's the diary of a young girl, and young girls are, like young boys, kindof a pain in the ass. It's like 300 pages straight of "No one understands me!"



I guess the reason this made it on to so many high school curricula is that young people might relate to it, and clearly some of them do, because they wrote pissed-off comments below this review - but this doesn't depict the horrors of the Holocaust. Night does that. This depicts the boredom of being locked in an attic for two years. And Frank is very bright, but not bright enough to make great reading out of a kid's diary.

In the pantheon of literature about being locked in an attic, Flowers in the Attic is still the gold standard.

Honestly, I just can't do it. I can't bring myself to finish the book. Ive tried three times already, and each time I have been forced to put it aside. Books and film about the Holocaust are fascinating, but not this one. Unfortunately, I was not engaged and found I couldn't care less.
I'll have to try it again in a few years.

On the up side, I firmly believe that Anne Frank, had she survived the war, would have grown up to be a marvelous, best selling writer. At the age of 13 her words are better than that of many modern day, famous authors.
n  n

آن فرانك هي طفلة يهودية من أصل ألماني عاشت في زمن ألمانيا النازية ارتحل والدها أوتو فرانك لهولندا معتقدا أنه سيجد الأمان من إضطهاد النازية لكن الظروف ساءت حين غزت ألمانيا هولندا واضطرت الأسرة للإختباء مع عوائل يهودية أخرى في ملحق لمكتب والدها وفي هذه المذكرات تكتب آن يومياتها في تلك الفترة التي حاصرهم بها الخوف
المذكرات لا تقتصر على الحالة النفسية التي عاشتها آن تحت وطأة ذلك الخوف وفي ظل الظروف القاسية ولكنها تبدو رحلة تحول للكثير من الإنفعالات والتقلبات التي تمر بها أية مراهقة غير أن ظروف الحصار جعلت تلك الإنفعالات مختلفة حادة أحيانا وقاسية على من عاشوا معها وحنونة في أحيان أخرى شاعرة بالذنب وراغبة في الحب والتفهم لمشاعر من حولها ..

عاشت آن قصة حب مراهقة لفتى جمعتها به ظروف الحصار وفي صفحات كثيرة كانت آن تحكي مشاعرها تجاه بيتر وهي مترددة ما بين أن تكون تلك العلاقة هي صداقة أم علاقة حب .. في نفس الوقت عانت آن من استصغار من حولها لها على أساس إنها طفلة لذلك كانت كثيرا ما تشتكي من عدم تفهم الكبار لمشاعرها خاصة وهي تعاني من عدم القدرة على التواصل مع والدتها للدرجة التي كانت تشعر إنها قادرة على الإستغناء عنها

أمور كثيرة كتبت عنها آن أهمها ما عاناه اليهود خلال تلك الفترة من الغزو الألماني ووطأة الجوع ربما قد تهون في ظل أن تكون لصيقا بأناس غريبين عنك عاجزين عن فهمك وذلك في فترة تقارب الثلاث سنوات وفي ملحق لم تخرج منه آن أبدا إلا لحتفها

تتوقف آن عن الكتابة فجأة بعد خيانة من أحدهم وكل من كان معها في الملحق سيق لمصيره
رحلّت آن إلى أحد المعسكرات النازية وماتت بمرض التيفوس بعد وفاة شقيقتها

أصبح ذلك الملحق مزارا للسياح

يجب أن أذكر إنني كثيرا ما شككت في وجود شخصية آن على الرغم من أنني شاهدت صورها ولا أدري لماذا !

I never expected to hate this beloved book, but hate it I did. I believe I have read a different, more childish and cleaner edition. This "definitive edition" was making me sick.
#1 I was having a great deal of trouble believing this book was written by a young teenage girl. It very much reads as if it was written by an adult male. Perhaps she was brilliant and very well educated which explains her exceptional erudition and perception. Does it explain the coy sexuality, or if this book is in fact by Anne, is it perhaps explained by her father's sexual confidences given to his precocious thirteen year old daughter?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some thoughts of mine I shared with friends who had also read the definitive edition:

I'd bet her father was uncomfortable releasing it uncensored as the main weirdness is him. I am extremely uncomfortable with some of the stuff he tells her. And they put the new guy, 54 years old, in her room?! Where she uses her chamber pot a few feet away from him?! Why didn't they put him in with Peter (16 year old boy with his own room in attic)? Or the father for that matter as he wasn't having sex with his wife anyways (and why should Anne know that and about her father's past and his "girl" from before that he will never get over and his passions which he tells Anne she is too young to feel yet) and Margot was already sharing the room with them (her parents). This book reminds me of Flowers in the Attic. And I have a very hard time believing it was written by a 13 year old. I never thought for a moment I would doubt this book which is as loved and revered as the Bible. But I doubt it and find it very weird and inappropriate.

I suppose, maybe, maybe....They were living in a terrible situation, but still, the family dynamics give me the willies. Mom is aligned with Margot, Dad with Anne. A father who would make sexual confidences to his 13 year old daughter is a very suspect father imo. And I can't reconcile parents who have no problem with their 13 year old using her chamber pot next to a sleeping (we hope) 54 year old man, that is just too weird. Would you be comfortable if your father wrote you a poem containing the words, "I've got no more panties, my clothes are too tight, my shirt is a loincloth, I'm really a sight!" And her conversations with her father, "When we first went into hiding, Father often told me about things I'd rather have heard from Mother, and I learned the rest from books or things I picked up in conversations." "Once when father and I were talking about sex, he said I was too young to understand that kind of desire." I believe Anne that her mother didn't like her much and I would bet the reason why is jealousy. Father pays a lot of attention to Anne, she sleeps in his bed when she is frightened, in her white nightgown "(the one that causes Margot to exclaim every evening, "Oh, that indecent nighty!")"

Something is wrong with the family dynamics, at the least. And I find it hard to believe this book was written by a 13 year old. Granted, I am not nearly as clever as the author of this book, but I remember my diary at 13. It went something like, Dear Diary, nothing happened today. And when I did write anything, probably not til I was 14 or 15, it was incredibly immature, nothing like the perception and coy and repressed sexuality of this book.

Oh, I agree with you that the whole uncensored book is better than the sanitized version. I've been a bit wide eyed and shocked at what I've been reading rather than bored with the much more normal 13 year old Anne of the first version of this that I read..... I know this book has been verified as true but I am not convinced, and if true, well...I won't be recommending that (my daughter) reads (this version). I think there are many better books she can read. I almost feel like this makes a mockery of the horror of the Holocaust and what the Jews suffered.

Otto Frank is certainly the person I would have suspected of being the author. But maybe it (the diary) is true and he is just the author of the author.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, that said, I've now finished the book and haven't changed my mind about the book's creepiness nor my doubts about who wrote this book. I mean when she is working on her conquest, mentally not physically according to the diary, of 17 year old Peter, snuggling with him and trying to figure out how to describe female genitals to him, telling him the parts and their appearance, and Peter is shocked, he had no idea that female genitals were located between a female's legs. What?! This just strikes me as so wrong and untrue as both a conversation between a 14 year old girl and a 17 year old boy and as something said girl would write in her diary. I do not believe this conversation took place. But there it is, written as the truth in this diary purportedly by Anne Frank.

Now on to the subject and of Anne's relationship to her mother. I felt bad for her that she didn't go to cheder and learn the concept of what a mitzvah is and the specific mitzvoth including honoring one's mother and father. She goes on and on throughout the book about how much she hates her mother and how she doesn't need a mother anymore and how much better she is than her mother. Here is a quote from late in the book, April 1944, "Young as I am, I face life with more courage and have a better and truer sense of justice than Mother......If God lets me live, I'll achieve more than Mother ever did...." How incredibly sad is that?! Everyone needs their mother, how much rejection and betrayal would a person have to feel to hate like this? Something terribly wrong here.

I've said about all I can about this book, except this: the basic facts are not in question: the war, the situation for Jews, the existence of these people, the hiding, the arrest and the deaths of the women, the girls and Peter. It was heartbreaking, they were so close to the end of the war. I may not have liked Anne or her father, but I mourn them nonetheless. And I've only read a book; I don't know the truth of any of them and can't judge them. I can only judge what the book says, and even that I should probably take a chill pill and relax. When I looked at sites that claim the diary is a fake, they were very anti-Jewish. I would rather be aligned with all the good-hearted people who think the diary is true than with people who claim it is a fraud and hate Jews.

I've thought about this book almost continually since I finished this review. I've decided to keep the original version as I would like my daughter to read that one. The Definitive Edition I am going to get rid of. I retain my feeling of falseness and wrongness with that edition. I have thought a lot about what it must have been like to be in hiding like that; the enormous stresses and the constant fear. I know of a couple of people from the Jewish community, parents and grand parents of people I know, who did survive the war by being hidden in attics and secret places in buildings. They did not come out unaffected. Emotionally I am on my knees in respect to those people who suffered; both those that died and those that survived. I am not judging that experience.

کتاب رو صوتی از طاقچه گوش دادم، گوینده عالی بود.