On June 12th, 1942, a young girl in the Netherlands named Anne Frank turned 13 years old. She received a cloth-bound blank book that she had requested for a birthday gift. Anne intended to use it for a diary, although she didn’t think anyone would ever be interested in reading it.
Anne wrote about her life and how she and her family went into hiding in 1940 to avoid the Nazi death camps.
She continued to write until their hiding place was discovered in 1944. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father found the diary after the war was over. Millions of people have been touched by Anne’s writing in the years since. Anne Frank would have turned 79 today. Link -via the Presurfer
For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later I, nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.
Anne wrote about her life and how she and her family went into hiding in 1940 to avoid the Nazi death camps.
The little autograph book/diary that Anne had received less than a month before going into hiding, became a mirror into the soul of the teenager. As the world around her was increasingly crumbling, she began to pour out her heart and soul in her diary. She also used several other notebooks and individual pieces of paper when the book was filled.
The entries in her diary record the thoughts of the girl. She records the growing tensions in their hideout, and even despises her mother, although later she chastises herself for having such thoughts. She records her first kiss, from a 16-year-old boy whose family was in the hideout with them, but then squelches any possible romance. All in all, she records the ups and downs of budding womanhood, under the most adverse of situations.
She continued to write until their hiding place was discovered in 1944. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father found the diary after the war was over. Millions of people have been touched by Anne’s writing in the years since. Anne Frank would have turned 79 today. Link -via the Presurfer
I think that reading her diary was an invasion of privacy and her father could have done something other than publish his daughter's private life and thoughts for the world to read in order to commemorate her.
I recall at the time when it ended so abruptly, I asked my mother what happened to her. She told me I needed to find that out for myself. Needless to say, many tears were shed at the library.
I haven't re-read it since. And I've been resisting it. Although I've forgotten most of the details of the book, I don't want to let go of the memories of the feelings I had. My feelings as a 13 year old girl - Anne's contemporary.
If you were to look into some information about Anne Frank and her diary, you would find that towards the end of her stay in "het achterhuis" (the secret annex) Anne Frank started editing her diary with the intent of having it published. She did this after hearing a broadcast from the dutch government in exile, requesting diaries te chronicle the war.
Anne Frank had always inspired to be a writer and this announcement led her to edit and rewrite large parts of her diary and giving it a title; Het Achterhuis. She also expressed the wish to others to have her diary published. After the war, her father; Otto Frank, was initially reluctant to publish it, mainly because of some of the things Anne wrote about her mother. After editing these out however, he decided to respect his daughter's wish and had the diary published under the title she intended.
So there was really no better way for him to commemorate his daughter than by publishing her diary, thereby fulfilling her greatest wish.
It's not a big distinction of course, but it helps defend against the Max Powers out there who claim the diary a fake initiated by Anne's father. If that were the case, ies and her husband had to be in on the "fraud" as well.
I feel you as you fly
In thunderclouds above the city
Into one that I love
With all that was left within me
Until we tore in two
Now wings and rings and there's so many
Waiting here for you
And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929
With rings that wringed right around a socket
Right between her spine
All drenched in milk, in holy water
Pouring from the sky
I know that she will live forever
She won't ever die
And she goes
And now she knows that she'll never be afraid
To watch the morning paper blow
Into a hole where no one can escape
And one day in New York City, baby
A girl fell from the sky
From the top of a burning apartment building
Fourteen stories high
And when her spirit left her body
How it split the sun
I know that she will live forever
All goes on and on
And she goes
And now she knows that she'll never be afraid
To watch the moring paper blow
Into a hole where no one can escape