Talking to a student about Anne Frank's diary.

As almost always, I get questions precisely when I think I state some "unchallenged" truth, and this question is good - why I believe it to be the most important document from the Holocaust for adolescents. After all, it doesn't really describe the horror that came afterwards. It is not about Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and about dying at the very end of the war. It is not about dying at all, really, even though the fear is omnipresent in the hiding-place. It is about living as a teenager in a tiny space with your parents and your sister and some more or less pleasant additional inhabitants that you can't afford to hate outright as they are just trying to save their lives.

I think it is the most important document of the Holocaust because it describes what happened to NORMAL, EVERYDAY people with all the positives and negatives that human beings are made of. It is a document to the random cruelty of hatred to strike people who have done absolutely nothing at all to provoke anybody. Who just wanted to live their difficult and easy and happy and sad normal lives and grow up and fulfil private dreams. It is about the humanity of those who became the victims of the Holocaust, about their personalities as defined before they were usurped by the evil machinery that forever changed the perception of what humans are capable of.

Anne Frank is a storyteller on the edge of the abyss who shows the horror by NOT describing it in graphic detail. This is her life, not her death. And to build empathy and love for humanity as a whole, we need to see the humans underneath the categories that psychopaths use to stigmatise "otherness".

As young and inexperienced as Anne was, she was fully human and perfectly equipped to show the world the bizarre disproportion between the abstract hatred that guided the criminals in charge during the Third Reich and the real-life targets.

When I first read this, aged 13, I had nightmares each night for almost a year, and I wished I could "undo" my knowledge. And now I promote this very source of my nightmares to the next generation because I strongly believe that by feeling for and with Anne and her family, we develop the tools to recognise the patterns of hatred and to speak up against them.

Some nightmares need to be dreamed to prevent others from becoming reality - again!

I started reading Anne Frank's Diary, after nearly twenty-five years of procrastination, and also in the later years due to the feeling of it being overhyped.
I was wrong …, way too wrong .

n  "You only really get to know a person after a row. Only then can you judge their true character."

"Mums had a hard time combing her hair because the family comb has only ten teeth left."n

What mesmerized me most during its reading, is the metamorphosis of a thirteen year young girl into a fifteen year young woman. The contents of the diary start off with almost mundane topics of day-to-day life in the Secret Annexe. And in twenty-six months of her writing, the transformation that is observed in the way she expresses her thoughts, provides the feeling of what she truly was.
She was a person capable of deep thought at the age of 15.

n  "We were talking about the picture of a film star I'd once given him, which has been hanging in his room for at least a year and a half. He liked it so much that I offered to give him a few more.
'No,' he replied, 'I'd rather keep the one I've got. I look at it everyday, and the people in it have become my friends.'"

"As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?"n

Usually when I read prose, I live within the book; 'it' becomes my world, or rather I become a part of 'it'; in other words, the book and my self become one. As a result, this time (although this was a diary) I was living with the Franks, the van Daans, Mr. Dussel, and the others who worked at 263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, through the eyes and the thoughts of Anne Frank.

n  "Oh, when will we overcome all these difficulties? And yet it's good that we have to surmount them, since it makes the end that much more beautiful."

"…, things are only as bad as you make them."n

Having lived for two years and two months in her thoughts, and only within the confines of the building, was depressive, but which gave way to insights which are hard to come by considering a person of her age. Anne was an aspiring writer (and she definitely was good at it), the way she writes her diary was certainly good, and at times very much unique (although of course this one was translated into English). Being inside Anne's own self, also made me look within my own self, which was to me of one of the highest importance of reading the contents of her writings to Kitty.

n  "It's hard enough standing on your own two feet, but when you also have to remain true to your character and soul, it's harder still."n

When I started reading the book, I could think of giving it a 3-stars … it was good no doubt, but by the end it had to become what it is!

n  "I'm left with one consolation, small though it may be; my fountain pen was cremated, just as I would like to be some day."n

Her topics range from her school friends, family, and her diary Kitty, to all the ways in which they lived and survived within the two years of hiding. She writes an Ode to her lost Fountain Pen; on Suffering and Beauty; on Puberty and Adolescence; on Longing for anything new; on Talking, and Solace; about how "The grown-ups are such idiots!"; on Writing and Doing things; about the Jews; on Wars; Anti-Semitism in Holland (at the time); about Nature; on Injustice towards Women; Racism, Discrimination, and Human Rights; Living a Happy life; on Work; her own Self-awareness; Contradictions; etc.

n  "I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!"

"What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is."n

The copy I read was the Definitive Edition, which had additional 30% of previously unreleased material (only in editions after 1995).Along with a Foreword and an Afterword, included was a 10-page essay on "The Legacy of Anne Frank" by Clare Garner. The essay describes how Otto Frank (Anne's father) got the book to be published, how he felt when he got his daughter's diary in his hands and started to read it bit-by-bit (after having survived the holocaust and returning to Amsterdam), and about the use of films and Broadway plays to keep Anne's legacy moving. Otto Frank later also helped in saving the Secret Annexe (which was supposed to be demolished), and which is now the Anne Frank House (it also includes a few objects that remain from the 'times') hosting international conferences and training workshops to highlight all forms of persecution, apart from being a museum. Visitors here also learn of human rights, discrimination, and racism, apart from the holocaust, while promoting Anne as a symbol of tolerance.

n  "There's only one rule you need to remember: laugh at everything and forget everybody else! It sounds egotistical, but it's actually the only cure for those suffering from self-pity."n

So what did I feel personally after the completion of the book? :)
Well, for one, let me confess, this was the first book that brought me tears (literally). No other book ever, has actually made me cry! This did not happen to me during the actual reading of the diary, but while reading one of Otto Frank's quoted feelings in his response to not attending the Broadway play based on the diary which opened at New York's Cort Theatre in October 1955. What he felt, was a quick reflection of the contents of Anne's Diary, and for me.
I also felt, if Anne had not died, she could have played one of those major roles of being the world-changers in her future. What a waste, … her and many others who were just washed off the face of the earth. RIP to them all.

Diary of a 13 year old girl who went into hiding along with her family during Hilter’s Rule in the “Secret Annex” which was a closed chamber in her father’s office building. Altogether 8 people lived in a small cramped up space. The only crime committed by them was that they were Jews, who were either persecuted or sent to jails by Nazi forces because of their faith.

She started writing this dairy because she felt that paper was far more patient than people. While living in a closed space she kept fighting with her mom who always taunted and made fun of her, which sometimes infuriated Anne but mostly she maintained her cool. Her dad always supported her but at times he even gave up on her when she misbehaved with her mother.

The Daans were also living with them, she started liking their son Peter and finally confessed her love to him. She always wanted friends, not admirers. She wanted people to like her character and deeds, not just her flattering smile. Anne wanted to be a journalist or a writer in order to leave her mark in the world.

For almost 2.5 years they lived in the Secret Annex; their living conditions got to the worse because of rampant poverty and lack of basic necessities - they were running out of money which they had saved.

However, their hiding came to an end as they were arrested and sent to prisons. Only her father survived the concentration camps and started sharing the message of his daughter’s dairy with people around the world.

This dairy is filled with horror, humor, everyday life and how Anne and others in those dreadful conditions tried to live in hiding until someone came for their rescue. Anne would always be cherished for her valor, silliness and authenticity which she kept despite living in such horrible conditions.

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I really wish I had a different translation of this book because this one lacks a lot of the personality and ease compared to the audiobook version I partially listened to. But this book should definitely be one of the books you read before you die because it is so tragic and enlightening. Nothing makes me angrier and sadder than seeing someone with so much potential and excitement rave about their passion for life, and in the end, never made it to accomplish their dreams, or see their work published. (this is also why This Star Won't Go Out made me sob.) Anne surprised me with how real and relatable she is, and she really seems to grow into her writing style and throughout the book you can note a change in her maturity and the way she describes and reflects on things. Had this book been easier to get through it would have been 5 stars, but some parts just dragged for me.

I am basically a terrible person.

This isn't a review- I'm not going to go into my reasons for giving this book 2 stars. That would not do anybody any good. I will simply say that I feel extremely guilty rating the book this low, but I hope people understand that it doesn't reflect my view of the Holocaust as a whole, or my views of Anne Frank as a person. I have the utmost respect for both.

The girlfriend of my great-grandfather* lost her mother and her daughter in the Holocaust. Her daughter had a hairpin, a beautiful golden thing with topaz and pearls, and it was passed down to me. I never got to meet my great-grandfather nor Fanny (his girlfriend), but she put the pin in a box and gave it to my mother with these words written on it. (I was still a baby, and neither of them would live past my second birthday.)







That pin is a lot like this book. Whenever I look at it, nestled in my jewellery box, I feel the weight of generations of guilt pressing down on me. Its owner is long gone, and yet I feel the strangest thing- simultaneously connected and disconnected. I am in possession of something that unnamed girl loved, just as reading Anne's diary, and there's an eerie sense of abandonment in the object being left behind but their owners having perished long before their time.

Granted, I'm Jewish, but I can't help but feel that simply by being alive and knowing of the Holocaust and of genocides in general, I am doing them a disservice. In the wake of tragedies like this, there is nothing to say, there are no words, so I'm not going to waste this review talking about the merits and downfalls of this book. It is not mine to critique- this is the diary of a real girl who really did live, and so pointing out its flaws is a vain pursuit, in that it is so inextricable from its owner, just like that topaz hairpin.

There is a time and a place for criticising memoirs without criticising their authors, but now is not the time nor the place. Suffice it to say that I feel like an awful person for rating this so low, but I will not budge on it. One of my core principles is that I judge books in and of themselves, and how they stand on their own- it is impossible to do so here, with the text so linked to the history.

I don't know what to do with The Diary of Anne Frank or that hairpin. They remind me to never forget the tragedy, but how could I anyway? I don't own them, and I never can- they're relics, relics that do not and cannot ever belong to anybody but their original owners, and so I suppose I'll always feel like I'm keeping watch over the prized possessions of two girls who are never coming back to retrieve them.


*He was a baker who became an army dentist when the bakers' union went on strike in the Great Depression. Quite an interesting fellow.

n  n
I never knew that a book could make me so emotional until I read this memoir for the first time during my high school days. Every time I was quarantined during this pandemic, I thought about Anne Frank and her family. When I found it difficult to stay indoors for just 14 days during each quarantine, the Frank family had to hide in the Secret Annex for two long years. That too at the backdrop of the world war and the holocaust. This young lady had to go through many horrible conditions in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne Frank shows us the horrors of one of the most brutal acts of cruelty in world history and the importance of freedom in a human being's life. This is a must-read book for everyone.

I Give This Book 4 Star Because Its Real Story I Feel So Sad For These People Who Died and suffered at The War Because of Hitler I Hope They in Heaven Now .

I looked around Goodreads before posting this review to make sure I wouldn’t get yelled at.

This book is worth reading, but not for the reasons you might think. Alex is correct in that Night is a better book in terms of its representation of the horrors of Holocaust Centers, but what makes this such an interesting read is precisely that it isn’t about those horrors, or at least not directly. This is a voyeuristic look into the psyche of a bright and socially observant teenage girl who—even admist the horrors of gas chambers and concentration camp internments that were taking place offscreen—was still but a teenage girl with day-to-day insecurities which often took precedence over the imminent physical dangers that she and her family were subject to the entire time the diary was being composed. The dichotomy of these two concepts is where the true horrors lay, in my opinion.

n  n  
n

I was also reminded, as I neared the end of the diary, a remark David used occasionally to make about abandoned internet blogs in that they’re a bit depressing. One moment the author is blogging away, sharing his opinions and ideas (as dumb as they may be) with no intimation that the end is nigh. In another moment it’s over—no closure, no explanation of why the blog was abandoned, and certainly no ‘Where Are They Now?’ VH1 follow-up special. Reading Anne’s diary was a lot like this. We all know what happens/happened to her, and yet there it is again—that discomforting ‘found footage’ feeling of knowing that it’s over because, well, it ended. For real.

Don’t read this book to try to gain an understanding of the genocide that occurred throughout Western Europe in the 1940s. Read it because often times the scariest thing about life is that you can never entirely hide from its terrors, even when you lock yourself away in an attic for two years.

Αρνούμαι να βάλω "βαθμολογία" σε αυτό το βιβλίο, γιατί δεν είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό έργο, άρα δεν μπορεί να "κριθεί" με γνώμονα τη γραφή, το συντακτικό, το περιεχόμενο, ή ότι άλλο ψάχνει κάποιος σε ένα λογοτεχνικό βιβλίο.
Εδώ έχουμε να κάνουμε με ένα ημερολόγιο που αποτυπώνει τις σκέψεις ενός δεκατετράχρονου κοριτσιού, οπότε να είστε προετοιμασμένοι να διαβάσετε για οτιδήποτε. Από μικρούς έρωτες και το φαγητό, μέχρι την "κακιά" μαμά και τα συναισθήματα της Άννας. Η Άννα ήταν ένα ατίθασο, θα έλεγε κανείς, κορίτσι η οποία έβλεπε με μία ιδιαίτερη αισιοδοξία τα βάσανα που υπέμειναν εκείνη την περίοδο. Επιθυμούσε να γίνει δημοσιογράφος και συγγραφέας ώστε να μη "ξεχαστεί" όπως θα ξεχνιόταν αργά ή γρήγορα η μητέρα της ή άλλες γυναίκες. Ήθελε να "κάνει" κάτι σημαντικό και είχε πολλά όνειρα για το μέλλον. Κάποιοι της απαγόρευσαν να τα πραγματοποιήσει, αλλά η Άννα κατάφερε (άθελά της) αυτό που επιθυμούσε. Έγινε η πιο γνωστή Εβραιοπούλα και το όνομα της θα μείνει για πάντα στην ιστορία. Η μητέρα της ξεχάστηκε, αυτή όχι...

Ένα βιβλίο που μας υπενθυμίζει γιατί δεν πρέπει να στερούμε από παιδιά το δικαίωμά τους στη ζωή και την ευκαιρία να πραγματοποιήσουν τα όνειρά τους.

❥ 5 / 5 stars

The afterword of this book is a part where you’ve known in your heart from the beginning what would eventually happen to them but when you really read it, it’s still such a hard-to-accept truth and the questions that “What did they do to deserve this kind of treatment and why were so many innocent people have to experience this fate because of a war?” will be stuck in your mind forever.

The book is so beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.
I enjoyed reading it completely.

"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."

Dear Anne, I hope what you confided in the diary, what we millions of readers around the world read today, will be a source of comfort to you, knowing that we are in awe of your courage, strength, and the magnitude of your faith. We can't begin to imagine what you and the rest of the members of the annex, as well as those others who were in hiding, had to go through: The constant fear of being discovered, the anxiety that comes from the uncertainty, the dire living conditions having to coup up in a small space for years end. And after all those sufferings, you had to be a victim and not a victor. That broke my heart, Anne.

To tell you honestly, Anne, I read your diary as if in a dream. I knew beforehand that it will be an emotionally taxing journey, not only because of what you've written but because I knew the end. So perhaps reading it as if in a trance maybe my way of protecting me from breaking down. But occasionally, when my veil of protection was shaken, I felt an icy cold gripping my heart. The discriminations and the horrors your people had to endure, and also the horrors the rest of the people in occupied countries had to endure, were too cruel to be true. But they truly happened. They did happen. And we live in that same world where at one point some deemed it right to exterminate one race! It's just appalling. But, while I felt all this Anne, you were optimistic. "Beauty remains even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance... A person who has courage and faith will never die in misery".

Your diary is truthful. It tells us how the eight of you lived nearly two years couped up in the "secret annex". You tell us how crowded it can be, and the quarrels between people who live in such close proximity. Then you describe the emotional strain of living closed up with constant fear and anxiety. You were a brave girl, Anne. But even you despaired at times. "I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery. But we shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping.." At times it was hard to read your words, Anne; the words full of life, hope, and faith. You hoped for the invasion to come, to rescue you, and to allow you once again to step into the free world. But fate intervened before that. After forming a close connection with you and the other members in the annex through your diary, it was hard to digest that none except your father made it through to the free world.

But I'll tell you this, Anne. Remember what you wrote in your diary about not wanting to be forgotten. You wrote "I can't imagine having to live like all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I want to go on living even after my death!". You are not forgotten and even after your death, you're living in millions of readers' hearts. You wanted to be an author. And you are one, through your diary. So dear Anne, in a way, you accomplished your goal. And I'll tell you this also, Anne. You are a beautiful soul. "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart". Only you could have said that having to live through such injustice and cruelty.

You wrote once, Anne that "ten years after the war people would find it amusing to read how we lived". But it is not amusing; it is heartbreaking. Only people who had similar experiences could truly know the physical suffering and mental agonies of such living. The rest cannot even imagine. At least, you are now in your eternal rest. You cannot be touched by any sort of suffering now. That is a comfort to my burdened heart.

I'll now say my farewell to you. But before I go, I have a confession to make. Anne, I bought your diary at Auschwitz. It may be looked at as a cruel trick played on you, selling your story at a place you suffered much. But to tell you the truth, Anne, I see it as a tribute to you and all the holocaust victims who died without their voices being heard. And I sincerely hope you'll feel the same.