Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl"

Cafe Society
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I’m really not sure of where to put this thread. It’s about a book, but after reading it, I would hardly count that book as “entertainment.” However, I can’t think of a better place to put it, so in Cafe Society it goes. Moderators, feel free to move it if you feel it’s better somewhere else.

Before I read Anne Frank’s famous diary of her experiences of 1942-1944 as a Jewish teenager hiding in Amsterdam, I wondered if it was so well-known because it was well-written, or because it served as a compelling historical document of a difficult time and place. After reading it (I finished it last night), I can say that, for me at least, it is both.

Anne’s story has so many elements. It is largely the story of herself, a developing, maturing teenager, and the people she interacts with on a daily basis. But as the Nazis take over and she is forced to go into hiding with her family, there is a sharp feeling of change. It is still her story, a very personal story. And yet, permeating her story at every point is this sense of something very dangerous all around, constantly threatening to encroach. We already know most or all of what the Nazis did as they occupied much of Europe, but Anne’s diary is a historical document in the sense that it provides a unique, deeply personal perspective on how that time effected a very few people. Some people wil say that history is mainly told in the big events, but I disagree. History means little if we can’t see how it effects even the most unlikely, otherwise unknown people. In reading Anne’s diary, I could see history’s effect on the individual more clearly than ever before.

And yet her writing itself is quite good as well. It’s fairly good when the diary beings, with her at age 13. It is even better when it ends, shortly after she turns 15. She had a talent for description and an eye for detail that is rare in any writer, and she was very honest in her feelings, opinions, and experiences. We get her impressions of the Germans and the occupation, of course, but we also get the stories of her squabbles with her family and with the other members of the “Secret Annex.” We get the stories of arrests and raids, but also the story of Anne’s impending menstruation and developing sense of sexuality. We hear about food shortages, but also about what she learned during her stay in the Annex, academically and otherwise.

In the end, reading Anne’s diary feels wrong in a way, because it is the very personal thoughts of a young girl who is struggling to express herself, and confiding in a receiver who was never meant to be a real person. And yet, now millions have read her thoughts. It is – I can’t stress this enough – a story of a maturing teenager. In a sense, it could be the story of my babysitter, or even eventually of my own daughters a few years down the road. However, it is also a story told under circumstances that would make most teenagers (and adults) cower in fear. The fact that Anne had the presence of mind and the strength and the courage to write down this document makes this one of the most important diaries ever written.

I won’t soon forget it.

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Read Melissa Mueller’s bio of Anne. It brings a lot to the story that Anne left out, or that Otto Frank decided was too personal for publication.

Amazing.

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Imagine what a writer Anne would have been if she had lived on to adulthood. What a loss.

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Imagine what a writer Anne would have been if she had lived on to adulthood. What a loss.

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The biography sounds interesting, and thanks for pointing it out! The version of Anne’s diary I read is supposedly the “definitive” edition, which includes the portions that her father had originally left out, including many of the comments on sexuality and the less-than-flattering statements about Anne’s mother (of which there were many!).

According to the foreword in the copy I read, there are essentially three established versions of the diary. There is the “a” version, which is what she had originally written from the beginning, unedited. Then there is the “b” version, for which she had re-written large portions of her original diary with the idea of pbulishing it after the war. The “b” version is still her diary, but edited by herself to improve on some of the passages. Her father’s version is referred to as the “c” version, and is comprised of edited sections of the “a” and “b” versions, but edited for length and content by Otto Frank. The copy I read was mainly translated from the “b” version, and purports to be unexpurgated.

Still, I think I will read the biography you suggest; it sounds quite interesting, and I’ve certainly found a new interest in the subject matter. Thanks again for pointing it out.

Walloon, that was my thought exactly.

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grumble Curse you hamsters, CURSE YOU!

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Another book you might like to read, along a similar subject, is Am I a murderer? by Calel Perechodnik. It’s the diary of a polish jew who becomes a ghetto policeman in an effort to save himself, his wife and his toddler daughter.

It is a fascinating read. The diary was edited by him in the course of writing but I still find it to be extraordinarily heartwrenching because the choices he had to make are some that I never thought about in the context of that time.