THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

The Holocaust is a symbol of terror and horror, but it has one shrine. This shrine is in the center of Amsterdam, and
each year thousands of visitors are touched by it. They climb slowly up the steep and narrow stairway and peek into
the little rooms at the top. Small, cramped rooms that hid a family during those terrifying times. Tiny quarters where a
young girl of thirteen kept a diary while she and her family were hiding from the Nazis.
It is a diary that the world knows well. It is a diary that has been translated into dozens of languages and has become
a play and a movie. Children around the world still read this diary in school as an inspiration to all who love freedom.
It is a diary that reminds us how terrible the Holocaust was and how brave and remarkable the children of the Holocaust
were.
It is the Diary of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was the second child of Otto and Edith Frank, and her family did not lack money or the comforts of life.
They lived in Frankfurt, Germany until Anne was four years old. That was 1933, and Adolf Hitler was in power. The
Frank family had committed one terrible sin in Hitler’s Germany. They had been born into the Jewish race. Hitler and
Nazi Germany hated the Jews. The Franks left Germany and crossed into Holland, in the city of Amsterdam. Otto
Frank has now started a factory to help produce jam. In a few years, Hitler’s German forces invaded Holland, and the
dark shadow of the Nazi war machine grew closer. Anne, now 11, could not go to school and had to wear the hated
yellow star. Her father, as a Jew, could not own his factory, and the Germans took it over. Anne writes about how
things had changed.
“Jews must wear a yellow star. Jews must hand in their bicycles. Jews are banned from trams (streetcars) and are
forbidden to drive. Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o’clock and only in a... Jewish
Shop. Jews must be indoors at eight o’clock and cannot sit in their own gardens after that. Jews are forbidden to visit
cinemas (movies) and other places of entertainment. Jews may not visit Christians... and must go to Jewish schools.”
Hitler’s racism had begun, and few knew how terrible the conditions would become. In 1942, the German soldiers were
everywhere, hunting down and carrying away Jewish families that never returned. There were rumors that the families
were split up, and that gas was being used to kill Jewish prisoners. In 1942, Anne’s older sister got a letter asking her
to report to a German work camp. The Frank family was forced to go into hiding in an office above Otto’s jam factory,
a tiny attic they called the “annex.” There, the family waited in silence during the day as the factory operated busily
below them. Night or day, they could not leave the crowded annex.
Anne now lived a life that was in hiding twenty-four hours a day. What kept her sane was writing in her diary every day.
When they had first gone into hiding, Anne’s father gave her a diary for her thirteenth birthday. Anne’s diary was written
to “Kitty,” an imaginary friend. She would write down her daily thoughts and feelings about growing up, and her dreams.
But as the diary continued, her diary captured the feelings and fear of a frightened, captive family, and the sounds of
German boots marching so close to them. Every day as Anne wrote in her little book, she knew that if the Germans
ever discovered their hiding place, they would probably all die. The crime of being a Jew in Germany was punished by
a sentence of death.
In the annex, Anne’s family was joined by another hiding family, the Van Pels, and another man, Fritz Pfeffer. Anne’s
favorite member of the Van Pel family was Peter, two years older than she. Her diary shows that she was very attracted
to him. The eight of them hid for two years in this tiny, crowded place. The only contacts with the outside world were
daily visits from a small group of Dutch people who brought them food and supplies.
Anne writes in her diary of these terrible times. “Our many Jewish friends are being taken away by the dozen. These
people are treated by the Gestapo (German police) without ...decency... loaded into cattle trucks. Men and women are
taken to the camps as prisoners with shaven heads. We assume that most of them are murdered. The English radio
speaks of them being gassed.”
Anne was born to be a writer. She wrote every day, even when she was angry or scared that today might be her last.
Many of her entries in the diary seem like a normal teenager in peaceful times, struggling with the issues of growing
up.
But fear was always there. Any loud noise, any mistake while others were in the factory, could end their lives. She
wrote in her diary that she wanted to publish a book called “The Annex” that would tell readers after the war just what
it was like living in Hitler’s Germany. She dreamed of being a writer that people remembered.
For two years the family lived, one day at a time, in the tiny annex, with German soldiers marching past the factory
every day. The eight people hardly had room to move around. Under those conditions, it must have been difficult to
believe that people in the world were basically good. But Anne did believe. In July of 1944, just after her fifteenth
birthday, she wrote:
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd (silly) and impossible to carry
out. Yet...in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
On August 4, 1944, just one month after Anne wrote those words, the German Security Service received an anonymous
call that some Jews were living in a small office above a jam factory.
The soldiers suddenly broke into the small apartment and attacked the families, arresting them, and carrying them
away as prisoners. The little annex was destroyed, with most of the books and family belongings on the floor. Anne
and her family were taken to a German holding area and then sent to Auschwitz, a German death camp. At the death
camp, people were brought to what appeared like showers, but deadly gas came out and killed them. Millions of Jews
were killed, their bodies piled in huge stacks.
Anne and her sister Margot were sent on a death march (walk until you die) and they died of the disease typhus in
March 1945. Tragically, the war ended only four weeks later, and the Germans were defeated. All the prisoners were
set free.
Of all the family, only the father Otto survived, but he had lost his entire family. After the war, he received a gift that
changed his life. During the arrest, Anne’s precious diary had been thrown to the floor of the annex. A Dutch woman,
Mrs. Gies, later found the diary and saved it. She located Otto Frank and gave the diary to him. He knew it was special,
and he wanted Anne to live through her wonderful book.
The Diary of Anne Frank was soon published and has sold more than twenty million copies to date. It was made into
a play that ran on Broadway in New York, and a famous movie about Anne was seen by millions of people throughout
the world. The play is still performed in schools today, more than fifty years later. The book can be found in most
libraries of the world and has sold more than twenty million copies.
Anne Frank died at sixteen years of age, and yet she will live forever through her diary of love and joy and forgiveness
in an age of horror and death. In a place of hatred, she returned love; in a time of death, she offered life. As she says
so beautifully in her diary:
“I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up
into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return
again.”
Hitler is dead. Anne Frank still lives with all of us today.
Instructions:
- Don’t print this reading, but read this story about Anne Frank's Diary and write a brief resume or sum up it in
50 words on a sheet of paper.