When I was reading *The Diary of a Young Girl* by Anne Frank, it does not feel like studying her story. Rather, it is like sitting there with a young woman who never had the opportunity to reach maturity.
Her birth in 1929 was not one of darkness, but rather was that of an educated, stable, hopeful family in Frankfurt. The first few years of Anne’s life seemed quite typical; she had school, friends and family. But from the time of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power onwards, everything changed for her life and the lives of Jewish families. During the early years of the Nazi era, hostility toward Jewish people was not created in sudden chaos but rather, slowly, systematically deprived and disheartened. When Anne’s family moved, they believed they had relocated from danger to safety. Imagine protecting your children, then suddenly learning that you traveled to safely and that the storm still caught up to you.
The invasion by Germany created chaos for Anne and her family as overnight they lost everything from family, friends, and social freedoms, to their jobs and, eventually, their lives.
The most painful part of what Anne went through was how oppression became a gradual banishment from the freedoms she once had. For example; at first, the Jewish children could no longer attend school. Next; the adults lost their jobs. Riding a bicycle, going to a cinema, and many other things were forbidden to them. The saddest part about this was that oppression does not begin with violence, but rather begins with subtraction, restricting one from the small, everyday freedoms.
After being systematically deprived of basic personal freedoms came the hiding.
The Secret Annex was not just a secret place, but rather a prison they chose over their fate being worse. The hideaway was 8 people living together in a very small space. As they had to be quiet throughout the day, they must also try to keep quiet so no one could hear them at the work floor. At different times, they were not allowed to flush the toilet or use water freely. They were not able to go outside. Imagine being a 13-year-old and being told that you cannot have any fresh air for many years.
However, while in that predicament, Anne was able to grow in her mind.
Anne and her mother had many arguments. She was very attached to her dad and would go to him for almost everything, and felt a profound disconnection from her parents; she often thought other people had the same feelings, and later blamed herself for feeling that way. She did not see herself as a living history of what it means to suffer from a traumatic experience, but was living and often showed her impatience, her strong emotions, and her extraordinary intelligence all at once. This is what makes her very approachable. She discusses her feelings of jealousy, her need for attention, and her sense of being overlooked, which are all reasonable feelings for any 13-year-old—however, the difference is that her experiences were continuing under the fear of being killed at any given moment.
Her diary became more than just a book; it became her closest friend as she refers to it as her ‘Kitty’ in order to express to it her feelings, her anger, her dreams, her embarrassment and her ambitions. As time goes on, you can see that her writing has matured to the degree that she begins to think about how her actions affect others beyond herself. She asks herself the question of whether she is immature or will her behavior improve? You can observe her mind continue to develop and mature in this new world.
What I find most compelling is her drive. Anne does not seize all of the opportunities offered to her due to her confinement.Upon hearing an announcement on the radio about encouraging people to keep their memories from the war, Anne Frank took a more serious approach in her writing. Rather than simply jotting down her thoughts, she was working at creating her future as an author. She had a vision of her words being read far beyond the confines of the Annex.
That vision makes the end of her story more difficult to understand.
In 1944, the authorities found the Annex and arrested everyone there, sending them to concentration camps. Anne and her sister died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from typhus in 1945. There was no dramatic ending. There was only illness, fatigue, and disappearance. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the only person who survived of the eight to go into hiding. When he got back to Amsterdam, he received Anne’s diary, which had been preserved. He made the decision to have it published.
The fact that someone’s belief that Anne’s diary was important changed everything. Her personal diary entries became worldwide by virtue of the fact that someone believed that they were important.
Anne is one of the most quoted persons, one being, “I believe that people are really good at heart.” Many have thought of this as being an innocent way of thinking. I look at this differently. As someone who was living under a regime set to take away her existence, this did not show ignorance; this shows strength. She made a choice to not allow hatred to rewrite her.
Anne was not always positive about life. She was fearful. She heard the sounds of bombings; she felt the strain of tension in the Annex. She was always afraid of being found and being sent away. She felt lonely, especially as she matured and desired to be independent. Consider growing up in the confines of a building. Your body goes through changes. Your mind begins to think on a more mature level. Your desire for freedom increases. Yet your physical environment remains constant – four walls.
The most tragic part of Anne’s story is the common nature of her dreams. She wanted to find love, to be a writer and to make a difference in the world. She never wished for money or power – just to be important. The normalcy of her dreams is why we can all connect to her story. She is a representative of all girls (and boys) who believed in the future, only to become victims of history.
Her diary also brings to light an uncomfortable truth about how normal individuals support an abnormal system. The implementation of the persecution of Jews was dependent upon documentation, neighborliness, obedience and apathy. The death of Anne Frank was not due to anarchy, it was made possible by organization. This recognition provides an opportunity for introspection and self-reflection as it relates to our very own communities. How fast will we accept non-justifiable rules? How often will we remain silent when someone is being persecuted?
Anne’s life serves to bring the Holocaust to reality. If we did not have her diary we would still know the numbers – millions killed. Anne’s ability to take an abstract number, such as in the case of her murdered Jewish family members, and show it through the tangible experiences of her, i.e. the experience of the daily arguments at dinner, her crush on a boy, her private fears, and her insecurity. By using the real-world experiences of someone who has been the victim of genocide to create a visual representation of her potential as opposed to simply reporting the statistics; she puts a face to the statistics.
The thing I find most remarkable about Anne’s experience is the juxtaposition of her confinement in terms of space or physical surroundings, as compared to the expansion of her emotional and intellectual state. While Anne’s physical world restricted her options for where she could go (i.e. the hidden rooms in which she and her family were forced to live) her emotional and intellectual states were anything but restricted. She had an opportunity to explore women’s issues past to the war, and herself in ways that were surprising to her; both through self-examination and her writing. The transformation of Anne from someone who was only a victim to someone who became strong through her experience due to the growth she experienced under extreme pressure.
We must also not overromanticize that strength; just having the courage to fight through injustice does not mean that the injustice is acceptable. Anne’s strength has become inspirational, but it, in no way, diminishes what she had to endure.
In summary, I see Anne Frank’s life as an unfinished sentence. We see the path she is travelling — that of a more developed and articulate writer, a more developed and thoughtful thinker, a young woman finding her voice. And then, in the middle of a sentence, the page is cut off in true form. This abruptness impacts the reader; it is a representation of the way that genocide cuts off lives and potential without any warning.
I do not picture Anne Frank as a symbol when I think of her. I visualize her as a small child at the window of the Annex, writing quietly while all around her are sleeping. She is trying to understand a world that doesn’t make sense to her. My vision of her is as someone who wants to be seen and not simply where she is as a Jewish target or as a victim; but because of who she is.
Anne Frank’s story continues because she recorded it without the benefit of hindsight or rewriting. She wrote her diary while in the middle of the uncertainty of how her story would end, and that immediacy is incredibly powerful.
Anne Frank’s story reminds us that history is not something in the past. History is made up of children’s lives coming to an unfinished end and knowing that what will happen to them is determined by societies through their choices. Anne Frank’s story brings humanity to those awful incidents that seem unthinkable. It raises the question of what kind of society would allow a very thoughtful and ambitious young woman to vanish into a concentration camp.
She can never be reduced to a footnote and through her writing, she achieved what she wished to have happen…she mattered.
By: Vaishnavi Verma
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