The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank

Anne Frank's autobiography The Diary of a Young Girl, is a story of a little girl who was a witness to the brutal annihilation of Jews at the hands of Adolf Hitler and the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) during World War II.

Anne Frank (1929-1945) was born to a German-Jewish family. Her father Otto Frank was in the Imperial German Army during the First World War and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1915. He married Edith Hollander in 1925.

The ideology of Nazism was conceptualized by Adolf Hitler around this time. Henry Ford Sr., who was a supporter of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, wrote in 'The International Jew' that Jews had humiliated the Germans. Native Germans started discriminating against Jews who lived in Germany. Germany was defeated in the First World War, and with it began the years of chaos for the German people. It was a difficult time for the Frank family as they were Jews, so they shifted to Aachen, and then to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl, is a well-known book based on the diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank's father Otto Frank gifted her a diary on her 13th birthday. Anne, Otto Frank's second daughter, was totally different from her older sister, Margot. She was an energetic girl who loved writing and reading; while Margot was reserved and interested in arithmetic. In her diary, Anne described her daily routine and also wrote about her friends. Some of the characters in her diary were Joop's friends Conny, Emmy, Kitty and Marianne. When she heard about the Germans declaring war against the allied nations United States, England and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, her stories about friends change to frustrations and horrors of holocaust. Anne's family along with four Jew families shifted to Secret Annexe in Amsterdam. It was the same office building, where her father used to work. They stayed there for 2½ months, till they were arrested and send to a Nazi camp in 1944. Here we find Anne's thoughts reacting to the horrific conditions in the concentration camp.

Her diary was safely preserved by a Dutch woman, Miep Gies, who protected the Frank family from the Nazis. When the Frank family was caught by the Nazis, Miep Gies found several pieces of papers and notebooks lying in the dark room where they had resided. She collected all the papers together and gave them to Anne's father Otto Frank. Later on, in 1947, her father published it under the title 'Het Achterhuis'. The book was translated into English by Barbara Doubleday and published by Vallentine Mitchell & Co. in 1952. The English version of the book was named 'Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl'. Today, her biography is available in more than 67 languages.

Why did Anne Frank want to write a diary?

Anne was an extraordinary girl, who wanted to become a writer. She wrote about her frustrations, fears and dreams, the quarrels with her parents and some interesting stories of her companions during their concealment in her diary. It was a distressing two years (1942-1944), which Anne acknowledged with a comment - "the world will learn good things because of Jewish suffering".

Anne Frank wrote in her diary:
"I haven't written for a few days, because I wanted first of all to think about my diary. It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I - nor for that matter anyone else - will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart." (from The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, 1952)

Three synopses from her diary
Though Anne's original manuscript was written in three volumes, collected together by her father Otto Frank. Otto Frank rewrote her diary for first transcription; while the second and third were published later with some new editions. Thus, the present book 'The Diary of a Young Girl' is a transcription of her original diary available in English and other 67 languages. The diary has an epilogue written by her family explaining their fate in the holocaust.

Sunday, 14 June, 1942 to Friday, 23 July, 1943
Anne began writing her diary when her family went into hiding; she noted the things she packed, while shifting to the Secret Annexe. She collected her hair curlers, handkerchiefs, old letters, a comb and school books. She mentioned that these memories were more valuable to her than her love for dresses. She wrote about how painful it was to be confined in the Secret Annexe: they were scared to go outdoors, restricted themselves to the dark room and communicated with one another in whispers.

Monday, 26 July, 1943 to Sunday, 19 March, 1944
Many of the Jews were killed by the disease Gastroenteritis and their bodies were sent back to Westerbork camp. Few of the Jews who were arrested by Hitler's troops, were treated like criminals and sent to labor camps; while some of them were killed in gas chambers. Anne and Margot too, were arrested by the Nazis and made slaves to do labor work.

Monday, 20 March, 1944
On 6th June, 1944, the Allied army entered Normandy, France and soon after, World War II was over with Hitler's suicide. Anne was very weak and fearful of leading a life without her parents. She died of typhus, seven months after her arrest, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Thus, Anne's diary is a reminder of the endurance of the human spirit through the horrors of holocaust. There are still some queries that need to be addressed: Why did Adolf Hitler call his autobiography - Mein Kampf (My Struggle)? Why did history agree to the annihilation of the Jewish race? How much do both the autobiographies ('Mein Kampf' and 'The Diary of a Young Girl') stand in contrast and what are the reasons behind their world-wide popularity?