Anne Frank

(Annelies Marie Frank)

1929-1945
Diarist

Anne Frank is known throughout the world for her diary Het
Achterhuis (1947; Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl), which
documents her adolescence in German-occupied Amsterdam during
World War II. The diary also describes the impact of Nazi anti-
Semitism on both Jewish and non-era.

Introduction

Frank's diary is at once a candid self-portrait, a portrayal of domestic life, an account

of people threatened with imminent death, a depiction of experiences and problems
common to young adults, and an examination of universal moral issues. This private
journal, which she did not live to see published, sheds light on an episode in history
that embodied extremes of both the degradation and the nobility of the human spirit.

Frank was born to an upper-class Jewish family in the city of Frankfurt. The early
childhood of Frank and her elder sister, Margot, was secure, loving, and comfortable,
but the year of Anne's birth also marked the onset of a worldwide economic
depression, a catastrophic event that affected the lives of a great number of
Europeans. In Germany, economic disaster, combined with the lingering effects of
the harsh demands made on Germany after its defeat in World War I, led to the
installation of Adolf Hitler as leader of the government. Through policies that
stressed rearmament, nationalism, and racism, Hitler sought to restore his country
to a position of preeminence in Europe. A primary target for Hitler's condemnation
were Jews; by aggravating long-held antisemitic prejudice, Hitler sought to purge
Germany of what he considered an exploitive group. In 1933, following Hitler's
decree that Jewish and non-Jewish children could not attend the same schools, the
Franks left their homeland and by 1934 were settled in Amsterdam, where Anne's
father, Otto Frank, directed a food import business.

An Average Student

Despite the growing threat of war, Frank lived a normal life, much like any Dutch
girl, for the next few years. She attended a Montessori school and was an average
student, remembered by one teacher as being ordinary in many ways but as having
the ability to draw more from her experiences than other children. In many respects,
Frank remained absorbed in everyday life even after the Germans invaded Holland in
1940 and imposed harsh anti-Jewish measures. Under the German occupation, Frank
was forced to leave the Montessori school and attend the Jewish Lyceum, where she
adjusted well and soon became known for her pranks and her incessant talking.
However, as Nazi horrors increased, including the roundup of Amsterdam's Jews in
1941 for incarceration in concentration camps, Otto Frank and his business partners
secretly prepared a hiding place in some rooms located in the top, back portion of
their company's combined warehouse and office building on Prinsengracht Canal. In
June 1942 Anne celebrated her thirteenth birthday, receiving among her presents a
small clothbound diary which she deemed "possibly the nicest of all" her gifts.
Several weeks later, Margot Frank was notified to report to the reception center for
the Westerbork concentration camp, and the family fled into the "Secret Annex."
They were joined shortly thereafter by a Mr. and Mrs. Van Pelz (rendered as "Van
Daan" in Anne's diary) and their fifteen-year-old son Peter, and several months later
by Albert Dussel, a middle-aged dentist. Together they remained hidden and virtually
imprisoned for over two years.

During her confinement, Frank continued her education under her father's guidance,
and on her own initiative wrote the equivalent of two books: in addition to her diary,
she also wrote a number of fables, short stories, reminiscences, essays, and an
unfinished novel. Life in the annex, a common concern in her diary entries, was
strained by quarrels and tensions arising from the anxiety inherent in the situation,
the frustrations of a monotonous, restrictive life, and personality clashes. The eight
annex inhabitants shared cramped, drab quarters and had to remain stiflingly quiet
during the day, at times refraining from using water faucets and toilet facilities to
avoid being heard by other people in the building. Their very survival depended on
remaining undiscovered. Through the generosity of four benefactors who risked their
own lives, the annex inhabitants were provided with food and supplies, as well as
companionship and news from the outside world. When on June 6, 1944 (D-Day),
news came that the tide of war had turned in favor of the Allies, hope increased for
the annex group. Then suddenly, on August 4, 1944, their hiding place was raided,
and they became prisoners of the Nazis. All were sent first on a passenger train to
Westerbork, and then in a cattle car among the last human shipment to Auschwitz.
Anne was remembered by a survivor of Auschwitz as a leader and as someone who
remained sensitive and caring when most prisoners protected themselves from
feeling anything. In March 1945, two months before the German surrender, Anne
Frank died of typhoid fever in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A public legacy

Of the eight inhabitants of the secret annex, only Otto Frank survived. When he
returned to Holland from Auschwitz, Anne's diary and papers were given to him.
Anne's writings had been left behind by the secret police in their search for
valuables, and were found in the hiding place by two Dutch women who had helped
the fugitives survive. Frank kept her diary for nearly twenty-six months, capturing
experiences which range from a visit to the ice cream parlor to her reflections about
God and human nature. What emerges from Frank's diary is a multifaceted young
person who is at once an immature young girl and a precocious, deep-thinking
individual. Yet, her inner world and writing ability had hitherto remained unknown to
anyone but herself. After reading her diary, Otto Frank confessed, "I never knew my
little Anna was so deep." Shortly after the war's end, he circulated typed copies of
the diary among his friends, who quickly recognized it as a meaningful human
document which should not remain a private legacy. Published two years after
Anne's death, the diary has since been translated into at least forty languages and
adapted into the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Diary of Anne Frank, which was
made into a motion picture.

Although stylistic considerations are of minor importance when compared to the

documentary value of the diary, some critics have described Frank as a "born
writer," or as someone who could have become a professional writer. Annie Romein-
Vershoor has expressed the view that Frank "possessed the one important
characteristic of a great writer: an open mind, untouched by complacency and
prejudice." Initially, Frank had considered her diary a private work that she might
someday show to a "real friend." Motivated by her need for a confidant and by a
strong desire to write, she disclosed her deepest thoughts and feelings to her diary,
though she sometimes doubted that anyone would be interested "in the
unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl." Conceiving of her diary as a friend,
she named it "Kitty" and wrote her entries in the form of letters to Kitty. Throughout,
the diary reveals Frank's sense of an unseen audience as well as her ambivalence
toward the importance of her own experience. She also sensed the need for variety
in her writing and was able to achieve it despite the repetitiveness of routine and
paucity of stimulation in her life. The vivid, poignant entries range in tone from
humorous to serious, casual to intense, and reveal Frank's ability to write narrative
and descriptive accounts as well as to write about abstract ideas. The diary, often
commended for its engaging style, is full of vitality. Meyer Levin has praised the
work for sustaining "the tension of a well-constructed novel," and attributes this to
Frank's dramatic psychological development and to the physical dangers that
threatened the group.

Critical Evaluations

Because Frank's diary was not written as creative literature, and because of the
extraordinary circumstances of the author's life, critics most commonly discuss the
human and historical importance of the work rather than its aesthetic or structural
elements. Most also express their personal responses to the diary, as well as to its
worldwide success and its powerful impact on readers. Anne herself and her
experiences in growing up are the primary focus of discussions about the diary as a
human document. Henry Pommer has stated, "The chief literary merit of the diary is
its permitting us to know intimately Anne's young, eager, difficult, lovable self," and
other critics express similar opinions. John Berryman has underscored the
significance of her diary as a frank account of growing up, explaining that, unlike
other books which are merely about adolescence, Frank's diary makes available the
mysterious, fundamental process of a child becoming an adult as it is actually
happening. In simply being herself, Frank also succeeded in portraying the
universalities of human nature and in touching millions. In particular, young people
can at once identify with her zest for life and her typical adolescent problems and be
inspired by her courage and ideals.

As a historical document the diary is an indictment against the 'Nazis' destruction of

human life and culture. As Ilya Ehrenburg has stated, "One voice speaks for six
million — the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl." Critics have
posited that while newsreels and books which explicitly portray Nazi atrocities have
had a stupefying effect on people, Frank's story acquaints people with everyday,
recognizable individuals, and has thus been phenomenally effective in
communicating this enormous tragedy. In postwar Germany, for example, there
were widespread expressions of guilt and shame in response to viewing the stage
production of The Diary of Anne Frank, and an intense interest in Frank among
German youth after years of repressive silence regarding Nazi crimes. Anne Birstein
and Alfred Kazin have asserted that "the reality of what certain people have had to
endure in our time can be grasped humanly and politically only because of the
modulation of a document like The Diary of a Young Girl, which permits us to see
certain experiences in a frame, in a thoroughly human setting, so that we can bear
them at all." Recognized by some critics as a portrait of humanity in all of its varied
aspects, Frank's diary has been used as a basis for considering other injustices in the
world and for assessing moral responsibility in contemporary crises. Frank herself
has become a symbol, not only of six million murdered Jews, but of other people who
suffer persecution because of race or belief.

Frank's diary, which embodies the triumph of the human spirit in a destructive,
dehumanizing system, has outlasted many other books about World War II. Although
it has been suggested that her writing is an escape into the ideal, it may be this
quality which partially accounts for the universal acceptance of the diary. Frank
herself questioned her idealism in an often-quoted passage: "It's really a wonder
that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to
carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people
are really good at heart." Her story and ideals have inspired many creative and
constructive responses which reflect the timeless message of her diary: the
importance, as stated by Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, of keeping "pity and kindness and
love alive in the world."