Review: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Title: The Diary of a Young Girl
Author: Anne Frank (translated by Susan Massotty)
Series: Stand-alone
Genre: Memoir
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The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most moving and eloquent accounts of the Holocaust, read by tens of millions of people around the world since its publication in 1947.

The Diary of a Young Girl is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the face of unfathomable deprivation and fear has made the book one of the most enduring documents of our time.

I read the Definitive Edition which includes 30% more material that had been omitted from the original edition.  The extra entries depict her struggles of growing up, finding her own way and opinions, dealing with what she felt was horrid treatment by her mother and the others in the Secret Annex, her changing body, etc.  If you’ve read Anne’s diary before, I recommend that you reread it by reading the Definitive Edition because it shows Anne in the light of being just a teenage schoolgirl living in unusual, horrible circumstances rather than a flawless symbol that so many people see her as.

Anne’s diary has been on my “to read” list since I started creating one in September 2007, but I’ve never picked it up until now.  I didn’t just pick it up by happenstance either.  This month’s tag on Shelfari is History so I decided that since I’ve always wanted to read Anne’s diary, now was as good a time as any.

I’m not sure what I expected to find in Anne’s diary, but it wasn’t what I read.  I’ve seen the movie and I guess I expected something a little more along those lines.  Of course, however, the movie couldn’t portray the feeling of the diary because it had to show everyone rather than just Anne and the world from her point-of-view.  As I started to read the diary, I realized that Anne was a teenage girl who just wrote about her innermost thoughts and feelings as any other teenager would.  The only difference I see is that she seemed more educated and, of course, her life experiences were a little more traumatic than those of most teenagers.

One of my favorite entries was written on Saturday, June 20, 1942.  It was her fourth entry and says the following:

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.

I honestly think Anne was inspired to write so faithfully in her diary.  To show the world what it was like to be a Jew during World War II–a Jew living in hiding.  Her style of writing’s incredible for having been written by a “thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”  In fact, I can’t imagine any thirteen year old to fifteen year old today writing as poignantly as Anne did, even if they were living in similar circumstances.

As I was reading Anne’s diary, I did some research because I wanted to find out about some of the people she mentioned.  In an entry on Saturday, November 27, 1943, she mentions the following about one of her best friends:

Last night, just as I was falling asleep, Hanneli suddenly appeared before me.

I saw her there, dressed in rags, her face thin and worn.  She looked at me with such sadness and reproach in her enormous eyes that I could read the message in them: “Oh, Anne, why have you deserted me? Help me, help me, rescue me from this hell!”

And I can’t help her.  I can only stand by and watch while other people suffer and die.  All I can do is pray to God to bring her back to us….

Dear God, I have everything I could wish for, while fate has her in its deadly clutches.  She was as devout as I am, maybe even more so, and she too wanted to do what was right.  But then why have I been chosen to live, while she’s probably going to die?  What’s the difference between us?  Why are we now so far apart?

Because of Anne’s lament, I wanted to find out what had indeed happened to Hanneli.  To my surprise, Hanneli Pick-Goslar survived the Holocaust.  And, shortly before Anne’s death, the two girls were able to see each other one last time.

In her second to last entry, Anne mentions an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life.  This came as a pleasant surprise to me because the date of her entry was Friday, July 21, 1944.  Corey and I just saw Valkyrie about a month ago and the assassination attempt she was talking about is what Valkyrie‘s based on.  It’s amazing to me how each of these historical stories validate each other and, in my mind, proves the Holocaust did happen.

Anyway, Anne’s diary is very inspiring.  Actually, it’s Anne that’s inspiring.  Even though she was living in such horrible conditions, most of the time, she was strong and spunky.  She dealt with bouts of depression and loneliness like anyone would in her situation, but she seemed to always realize and look for the good in things.  She was always trying to improve herself.  And, as far as the diary’s concerned, she never lost her faith in God, which is significant in my opinion as a lot of people do in those types of situations.  She’s a great example of enduring to the end in the midst of horrible adversity.  We’d all be a little better off if we could be more like Anne Frank.