"Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl."
Dear Anne, if only you knew. Your little diary has now been published in more than 70 languages and been read by tens of millions of people all over the world.
Gifted this little red checked diary on her 13th birthday in the summer of 1942, Anne Frank began to document her life and her innermost thoughts. Less than a month later, her whole family went into hiding because of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Anne continued to write in her diary faithfully, and after hearing a radio broadcast from the Dutch minster of education, art and science in March of 1944 calling for "ordinary documents" such as letters and diaries to help preserve this unique time in history, she mused over the possibility of publishing her diary someday after the war was over. Little did she know she would never live to see that day.
Anne Frank lived in the Secret Annex with her father, mother, and sister, as well as her father's business partner and his wife and son, and eventually a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer, from July 6, 1942 until August 1944 when they were discovered and deported to Nazi concentration camps. Of the eight, only Anne's father Otto Frank survived the war. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen at the age of 15, probably only weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. If that doesn't absolutely break your heart, I'm not sure what would.
If only Anne could see the impact her diary has had on the world. It has become the best known and most widely read document of the Holocaust, and Anne is seen as the symbol of the one million Jewish children who were murdered during that horrific time in history. Her diary went on to be adapted into a play which won the Pulitzer Prize, a 1959 film which won three Academy Awards, and it is pretty much a standard reading requirement in many schools all over the world.
I remember reading excerpts from Anne's diary when I was in school and seeing the film as well, but I never read her diary from cover to cover until last year. I took it for granted that everyone knew who Anne Frank was, but as I carried her diary around with me for several months last year while I was reading it, I encountered more than one person who had never heard of her. That is a travesty because we cannot forget what happened during World War II. It may sound pithy but "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." If the old adage is true, we can't allow Anne's story to fade from our memories.
Being so familiar with Anne Frank's story before going into my complete reading of her diary made it even more heartbreaking. I remember starting it on the first day of September thinking I would fly through it easily that month. However, as I read a few entries each day, I kept turning to other books, not wanting to come to that abrupt ending, and I didn't finish the book until almost halfway into December. As I got closer and closer to the final pages, my dread grew. Dragging it out did not preserve me from bawling my everloving eyes out when I read the words:
ANNE'S DIARY ENDS HERE.
This girl, cut down just as her life was beginning, said in one of her very last entries:
It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more."
I mean, honestly.
The thing that struck me the most profoundly was how thirteen Anne was. All her little vanities and heartbreaks. Her squabbles with her mother and her hurt feelings over being so misunderstood. Her curiosity about the world and her wonder at her own changing body. I identified so easily with that thirteen year old girl. I couldn't help but giggle at her perception of her romantic conquests or roll my eyes at her silly complaints or sigh in solidarity over her blossoming ideas about life. Then she'd casually slip in a line of how she longed to feel the sunshine on her face and I'd feel my heart squeeze in anguish as the fresh realization of whose diary I was reading washed over me again.
I hope Anne's story continues to impact our world until it comes to its end. Her voice, and the millions of voices it represents, can never be silenced. Anne once wrote, "I want to go on living even after my death!"
Oh Anne, you have.
