In memory of Anne Frank

On the 12th of June Anne Frank would have turned 90. Since I am interested in history and love to read books, in this article I would like to talk about one of the most famous books, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, and its writer, a young but very smart, courageous and inspiring girl.

Who is Anne Frank?

Anne Frank was born in a Jewish family in Germany in 1929. Since in that period  there was a hatred of Jews and a poor economic situation her parents decided to move to Amsterdam. On 1 September 1939, when Anne was 10 years old, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and so the Second World War began. Not long after, on 10 May 1940, the Nazis also invaded the Netherlands. Slowly but surely, they introduced more and more laws and regulations that made the lives of Jews more difficult. In the spring of 1942, Anne’s father had started furnishing a hiding place, where they had to live for two long years.

The diary:

“Because paper has more patience than people.”

On her thirteenth birthday, just before they went into hiding, Anne was presented with a diary. During the two years in hiding, Anne wrote about events in the Secret Annex, but also about her feelings and thoughts. In addition, she wrote short stories, started on a novel and copied passages from the books she read in her Book of Beautiful Sentences. When the Minister of Education of the Dutch government in England made an appeal on Radio Orange to hold on to war diaries and documents, Anne was inspired to rewrite her individual diaries into one running story, titled Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex). Anne started rewriting her diary, but before she was done, she and the other people in hiding were discovered and arrested by police officers on 4 August 1944. She was deported to the concentration camp and in February 1945 she died, but her diary survived and became a bestseller, and nowadays it is in the top 10 of the most read books worldwide.

The memory about Anne Frank:

The diary of Anne Frank was translated into around 70 languages, people all over the world were introduced to Anne's story, and in 1960 the hiding place became a museum: the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. In 2009, the notebooks of the diary were submitted by the Netherlands and included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. “The Diary of Anne Frank is today one of the world's most powerful voices about the fight for human dignity, and the rejection of all forms of racism”, UNESCO.

I first became acquainted with the book, when I was 13 or 14 years old. “The diary of Anne Frank” was part of my curriculum, and I still remember how deep impression this book made on me. Years passed, and I decided to re-read the diary, as well as to learn the biography of Anne Frank, and I can say that Anne Frank and her diary will always remain in my heart, and her story will always be reflected in my soul.

Links:

https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2019/6/12/today-anne-franks-90th-birthday/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank#The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/register/full-list-of-registered-heritage/registered-heritage-page-2/diaries-of-anne-frank/