During the reign of terror of the Nazis headed by the cruel, dominating, albeit a very intelligent Anti-Semitism fanatic Adolf Hitler, a little girl with pretty brown eyes was born to Edith Hollander and Otto Frank on 12th June, 1929 who was named as Annelies Marie Frank, in short “Anne”. This little girl with an insatiable hunger for knowledge, an inextinguishable spark for writing and an indomitable courage wanted to become a writer from the very beginning and wanted to express her thoughts to people in the most vivid way.
She kept a diary in which she recorded all her innermost thoughts and intimate feelings and what she thought of the people around her. It was her 13th birthday gift from her father- an autograph book bounded with red and white checkered cloth with a small lock and she decided to use it as a diary and started writing almost immediately in it.
On 6th , July, 1942, the Frank family had to go into hiding in a Secret Annexe- the Achterhuis, above the Opekta offices in Amsterdam, to evade relocation to a work camp. A handful of trusted employees of Otto Frank helped the family in hiding, catered to all their needs, ensured their safety and provided them with food. They were also the only connection the people in hiding had to the outside world, and they kept the occupants well informed about the war, and the chaos caused by the Nazis outside. Some time later, the Franks were joined by the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. Initially Anne was excited to have new people to talk to but then she grew tired of Auguste van pels whom she regarded foolish, and Herman van pels who was selfish and the insufferable and selfish Pfeffer. She formed a close bond with all of the “helpers” and was particularly close with the young typist Bep Voskuijl.
In her diary, Anne wrote of her dreams of becoming a journalist or an author, about her close relationship with her father and difficult and ambivalent relation with her mother. She struggled with jealousy for her sister, Margot and entered into a kinship with the shy and awkward Peter van Pels. She expressed her frustration and anger for being treated as “a little baby whose opinion didn’t count” by most of the family and incessantly suffered from mood swings. The sisters grew close when Anne matured a little and overcame her jealousy. At times, mood swings got the better of her and she just felt mad at the people who annoyed her and wrote unflattering things about them in her diary, but when her anger dissipated, she’d become regretful for having written those things and would edit them to show remorse and would scold herself for writing such harsh things in her mad rage. Writing in her diary was an outlet to her feelings and anger; where she could record everything that was going on in her brain, all that she felt about the people around her- jealousy, contempt and affection.
As she matured, there was a transition in her diary entries- they became more introspective; retrospective and dealt with more serious topics such as her future, why she wanted to have something more than a husband and children, something for which people all over the world would remember her; she wrestled with her anima and considered what kind of woman she’d grow up into. She tried to understand her identity in the microcosm of the Achterhuis and also the workings of the cruel and ruthless Anti-Semitic world outside.
In her final diary entries, Anne was particularly lucid about the changes she saw in herself, her ambitions, and the tremendous hope she had. She had a clear picture of how she had matured in the period of time she spent confined to the annexe, hidden from the world outside.
But life for those in hiding changed dramatically from the worse to the worst; when they were transferred from the frying pan onto the blazing fire, on 4th August, 1945. Some anonymous turncoat had tipped the Gestapo about the Jews in hiding and the Secret Annexe was stormed by the German police and they arrested all the innocent Jews whose only folly was that they were Jews!
Fortunately, with some stroke of luck, Miep Gies, one of the helpers saved Anne’s diary and kept it with herself, to return it to its owner after the war. It was a sensible thing to do or else we wouldn’t have known the story of one of Hitler’s and the Holocaust’s famous victims.
After the capture of the occupants of the Achterhuis, Anne, her mother and her sister were first sent to Auschwitz and then the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, where a series of humiliations, hard labour, scarcity of food were in tandem and disease was rife. After battling with tribulations fearlessly which was quite impressive for someone her age, it was a typhus epidemic which claimed her on a day in early March. The exact date on which this budding author died is unknown.
But from amidst all the facts we know about her, perhaps the greatest was this- Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl whose diary is a strong and candid testimony that not only highlights the trials and tribulations of an adolescent in Hitler’s reign, but also the cruelty and the unfairness of the Nazis ;the wounds they inflicted on Jews both physically and mentally with their Anti-Semitic policies only because of their religion and the innocent lives they claimed in various brutal ways.
Anne Frank’s death was a colossal loss to this world. It lost someone who’d’ve become one of the most famous authors in the world. It was one which cannot be compensated with absolutely anything. With her diary published, her father fulfilled her dream of being known by the world. And she has become one of the staunchest role models for people all over the world today. The publication of her diary-a powerful written testament that accurately portrays the power of love,faith and goodness in the darkest of the times , is the tribute she’d have longed for and she finally got it in her grave!!!