Diary of Anne Frank Literary Review
by K. Eleanor Collins
Holland. July, 1942. I imagine a small Jewish family gathered around a candle in the kitchen of their humble home to discuss a letter or ‘call-up’ as it is known, that their daughter Margot Frank receives from the Nazi regime. The call-up requires the 16 year-old girl to report immediately to a labor camp in Germany. By 1942 Hitler had already assumed communist control over many parts of Western Europe including Austria, Poland, France, Hungary and The Netherlands. His hatred and malicious intent towards the Jews had spread across the world like venomous doctrine. But word was reaching out that they were meeting horrific ends through systemic and systematic approaches—to gather them up for extermination. I can imagine that the voices in this room on a beautiful Spring day are strained with nervousness and that the handling of the matter is talked about with cautiousness and great urgency on their minds. The bright colours of the walls of a the house turns a sullen dread and becomes muted with fear. Otto Frank and wife Edith, with their two daughters Margot and Anne huddle together to discuss going into hiding at once, for the looming threat of concentration and extermination camps for Jews in Holland is imminent. As America enters the war with Germany, borders are closed and Otto’s attempts to take his family and flee from desperation to more liberal shores proves unsuccessful. Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany on July 12, 1929. In 1933 her father, Otto Frank moves his family to
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Amsterdam in an effort to escape the present dangers facing the Jews in Germany, representing a new beginning and hopes for a brighter future. In the Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank talks about everyday girlish cares and fantasies, from her popularity with boys and classmates, academic woes and accomplishments, to receiving her first diary, a present from her grandmother on her 13th birthday are all vividly presented in her novel. Anne leaves none of herself behind as she pours out her soul onto the pages of her journal in a tone that evokes confidence, grace, and depth as well as a well-defined, womanly aesthetic to the way she presents herself in writing. Anne is not shy and the least bit reserved about her thoughts. She structures and shapes them in a way that leaves no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation. One thing that comes clear in reading her entries, is that the young Anne has many questions and approaches them with vigour and enthusiasm as most girls or even adults seldom do. These questions reflect a spirit that is far wiser than she allows herself to be credited for. Masquerading as a child before her family and classmates but behold, a deeply philosophical and literary prodigy beyond her years is bursting off the pages of this intense diary. Anne is not the type to leave questions unanswered, or be tucked away until an opportunity presents itself for an adult to provide the answers. No. Anne dives wholeheartedly into the unknown herself, searching them out through the darkness and never returning to the reader empty handed. Anne is very present, not aloof. Observant and never naive. Not fearful of the truth, given or received. Witty and excitingly clever. She doesn’t mind being lost in her daydreams as they offer some momentary relief from the unbreathable circumstances of life inside the Annex, but confronts the frailties of life head on. She is much more informed about the complexities of girlhood amidst the cruelties of war and persecution than most teenagers. She calls the players in this war by their names and progressively lays out the timeline of events from her carefree days before the German invasion of the Netherlands up to the family’s final days in the Secret Annex. Anne addresses her entries to a peculiar figure, Kitty. As she explains in her entry dated June 20, 1942, Kitty isn’t an imaginary friend as one might first assume, she is merely the friend who gives Anne a space to be truly uninhibited, vulnerable, and safe from the criticisms surrounding her daily life.
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“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 13 year-old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest. Paper has more patience than people. I thought of this saying on one of those days when I was feeling a little bit depressed and was sitting at home with my chain in my hands bored and listless wondering whether to stay in or go out. I finally stayed where I was, brooding. Yes, paper does have more patience than people, and since I’m not planning on letting anyone else read this stiff-backed notebook randomly referred to as a diary Unless I should ever find a real friend it probably wont make a bit of difference. Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place. I don’t have a friend. Let me put it more clearly since no one would believe that a thirteen year-old girl is completely alone in the world, and I’m not. I have loving parents and a sixteen year-old sister and there are about 30 people I can call friends. I have a throng of admirers who can’t keep their adoring eyes off me and who sometimes have to resort to using a broken pocket mirror to try and catch a glimpse of me in the classroom. I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. On the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary, everyday things. We don’t seem to be getting any closer and that’s the problem. Maybe it’s my fault that we don’t confide in each other. In any case that’s just how things are and unfortunately they’re not liable to change. This is why I’ve started the diary. To enhance the image of this long awaited friend imagination I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do but I want the diary to be my friend and I’m going to call this friend, Kitty. Since no one would understand a word of my story if I were to plunge right in I better provide a brief sketch of my life much as I dislike doing so…” “Paper has more patience than people…” a sharply eloquent discovery for a girl to make at thirteen. At times the reader gets so drawn in to her life that it becomes very easy to forget her age. She is so easily identifiable in the unravelling of her feelings and perceptions of worldly !3
things that it almost begins to feel like you are looking in a mirror, looking through her window, walking right beside her, or curled up at the foot of her bed, listening to every word. In many ways Anne brings that exploration and understanding of the reader’s own feelings closer to the surface. She comes off the page sounding like a real woman having real conversations with her close friend. The only apparent difference that brings you back to the reality of her age is that most women aren’t as brave. Only children are allowed to be that free and honest with their expressions. But in truth, paper cannot judge, it cannot turn its back, it cannot have a fit, throw insults or disagree, it cannot talk or spill your secrets. Well, perhaps that last one isn’t entirely true. Because had it not been for the pages of this diary spilling its precious secrets, the world would not have fallen in love with this young writer who was destined to be one of the greatest authors the world has ever known, all with her first and only novel. The writer’s overall tone in the early parts of her diary lets the reader visualise this bouncy, gleeful young girl who takes a lighthearted approach to adolescence. The reader empathises with her frustrations regarding the extent to which Nazi ideology had stripped the Jews of all their natural freedom and replaced it with 400 newly constructed anti-semitic decrees, intending to treat them as outcasts: a)
Jews were instructed to wear a yellow star on their sleeves
b) Jews were forbidden to sit in gardens after 8 pm c)
Jews were forbidden to ride bicycles and were forced to turn them in
d) Jews were forbidden to use trams e)
Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own
f)
Jews could only do their shopping between 3 - 5 pm
g)
Jews were forbidden to be on the streets between 8 pm - 6 am
h) Jews were forbidden to go to theatres, cinemas, or any other form of entertainment i)
Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any athletic
devices j)
Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes
k)
Jews were required to attend Jewish schools…”
Etcetera, etcetera…
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After reading through this list and feeling oppressed on every side, Anne juts in almost casually in the end… “Life went on” It is the writer’s way of telling her audience that despite it all, she is okay. She finds solace and escape through her passion for writing, choosing not to be overcome by the miseries in her world. Hitler’s stringent rules were perhaps a reminder of the Ten Commandments given to the children of Israel on Mt. Sinai, that throughout the generations, morphed into the barrage of do’s and don’ts known as Jewish law, leading to the Pharisaical approach to attaining righteousness in the eyes of people, not in the eyes of God. Hitler is mocking the Jews. To a large degree the writer gives you an expansive and critical look into the ordinary lives of Jewish people that until 1947, when the book was first published had not been offered before. This modern family infuses Judaism with a bit of Christianity by observing Hanukkah and Christmas, and Anne’s reading of the Bible which was given to her by her father— an optimist. Well informed for her age, She doesn’t shield herself from the issue of war. Her wide-eyedness and unending curiosities are evident and the reader gets swept up in romantic thoughts as she talks about her love for Peter, son of the Van Dans (or Van Pels as were the actual last names) Her candid, luminous telling of these tender moments, echoes the fondness and lightheartedness of innocence. By the middle of this journal her tone and use of language changes. She becomes a more sophisticated and descriptive lyricist in her writing as the years went on, enhancing her use of metaphors, comparing herself to a bird with snapped wings banging her head against the darkness of her cage. Her dwindling hope and growing sadness becomes the undertone of all she describes, even in the sprinkling of happy moments, the story never fully returns to the jovial state as evident in her earlier entries. There were two very poignant moments in Anne’s diary that drives home the realities of suffering in war. Beyond the physical isolation and tension that is apparent as eight individuals try their best to keep peace amongst themselves while hidden from the world outside, there is perpetual fear of being discovered waiting around every corner and luring under every shadow. There is also a deeper, perhaps more crippling form of emotional isolation that Anne describes.
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The following verse bridges the distance between Anne’s sorrow and the sorrow that lives within us all: My nerves often get the better of me, especially on Sundays. That’s when I really feel miserable. The atmosphere is stifling, sluggish, leaden. Outside you don’t hear a single bird and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over the house and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld. At times like these, Father, Mother and Margot don’t matter to me in the least. I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and keeps hurling itself against the bars of this dark cage. Let me out where there’s fresh air and laughter. A voice within me cries, I don’t even bother to reply anymore, but lie down on the devan. Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps past the time since it’s impossible to kill it.” Friday, October 29, 1943. Anne also expresses her fears that the Secret Annex could be uncovered at any moment, and that they would be hauled off to concentration camps. She describes the military planes flying overhead, the shooting in the streets below, and bombs going off all around. One can’t help but tremble in these moments. The anxiety is too great to consider so we simply read on attempting to ignore the obvious end to this story. By 1944, Anne finds comfort only in God and a pruning away of the childlike things that began the diary has taken place. Her voice is not as light as it once was, she’s weighed down. She tries to think about her life after the war but in her voice there’s a lingering sense of knowing that those days will never
The business premises at 263 Prinsengracht where the Secret Annex is located.
come. Her final entry on Tuesday, August 1, 1944, there is the normal discussions and observations of her father and sister. She talks at length about two Anne’s emerging. The Anne she knows herself to be and the Anne she is perceived as being. The Anne she wants to be, living !6
alongside the Anne she portrays. In this relationship or tug of war, the writer discovers that between the two Anne’s there is a longing to be free from both the confines of the Annex and the walls she has constructed around the real Anne. For outside those walls the pseudo Anne is the one who is really free. Perhaps it was fate that causes this peeling back of characters to take place in her last entry. The reader now has to address the opposing personalities created in themselves in order to find freedom and acceptance, the ultimate
The desk in the room of Anne Frank and Fritz Pfeffer in the Secret Annex. Reconstruction, 1999.
Fotocollectie: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam / foto: Allard Bovenberg
desire of the individual. Throughout the book the writer is good at keeping the reader tuned into her life. Suspicions hung over certain individuals who might possibly betray the family. But altogether, nothing unusual is happening and nothing prepares the reader for the end of her diary. Anne’s voice falls suddenly off the edge of the page into immortal silence. The reader stares helplessly into the white sheet, backside and frontside, gazing up and down, flipping the pages back and forth desperate to find any lingering signs of Anne who echoes nothing more. The writer has now left her indelible mark on the reader who carries on in her place, filled with curiosities and questions all her own. What happened, Anne? Who betrayed you? Was your suffering long? I have no doubt she would tell us if she could. On the morning of August 4, 1944 between 10 a.m - 10:30 a.m the inhabitants of the Secret Annex were arrested by Dutch police and put into prison. Edith Frank was sent to to the Westerbork transit camp. In September, Edith and her family were deported to to the AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camp and were later separated. After being made to work in horrible conditions, Edith fell ill and died a few days later on January 6, 1945, three weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne and Margot Frank contracted scabies while at Auschwitz, then were transported to Bergen Belsen concentration camp where conditions were overcrowded and unsanitary. The prisoners were hungry and cold and many died of starvation and disease. Margot and Anne !7
contracted Typhus and died in March 1945. Anne was 15 years old. Bergen Belsen was liberated one month later. There is a cry in Amsterdam that has moved across the world and time for a young woman who in her short life taught us to seek out the glimmer of sun in ever dark cloud. Since its publication, The Diary of Anne Frank has been marketed to teens but has clearly become an source of inspiration for people of all ages. It has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold over 32 million copies. Anne’s dream was to be a famous writer. At last she has her wish.
References: Frank, A. (1947). Diary of a Young Girl Photos: annefrank.org
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