This post was inspired by reading Anne Frank's diary ( Anneliese Marie Frank" Het achterhuis " ) - notes from a Jewish girl aged 13-15 from a shelter in which Anna's family and friends (8 people in total) spent more than 2 years hiding from the repressions of the occupying German administration of Amsterdam directed against the Jewish population.
Summary of Anne Frank's Diary
In her diary, Anne Frank almost daily described life in captivity, the everyday life, habits, hopes and aspirations of 8 people. These were:
- Otto Frank - head of the Frank family, director of the company "Opecta", in whose building the shelter was located,
- Edith Frank - wife of Otto, mother of Margot and Anna,
- Margot Frank - daughter of Otto and Edith,
- Anne Frank - daughter of Otto and Edith,
- Herman van Pels - head of the van Pels family, friend of the Franks,
- Augusta van Pels - Hermann's wife,
- Peter van Pels - son of Augusta and Herman,
- dentist Fritz Pfeffer is the eighth prisoner.
The Frank family prepared in advance for the fact that they would have to hide from the Nazis: they prepared the premises, moved some of their things there, stocked up on food and money, and began planning for resettlement in the event that the occupying German administration tried to arrest them. In the summer of 1942, Margot received a summons from the Gestapo and the Frank family hurriedly moved to a shelter. A month later they were joined by the Van Pels family, and a little later by Fritz Pfeffer.
Anne Frank, the youngest prisoner, keeps a diary, describing in detail their life, daily schedule, meals, relationships inside and with the outside world, as well as her thoughts on war, sexual issues and much more. From the diary one can reproduce many details of life in occupied Holland: persecution of Jews and Christians helping them, deterioration of the economic situation, inflation, famine, etc. Anna has been keeping a diary for more than 2 years, towards the end the entries become longer and deeper (Anna quickly grows up and acquires a completely adult view of things). The discussions about the relationship between the younger and older generations, about character, human values and faith in the best are very interesting.
Shortly before the Germans leave Amsterdam, an unknown person, privy to his secret, betrays and all the inhabitants are arrested by the police and the records end there. Then the prisoners are sent to concentration camps, in which only Otto Frank managed to survive.
Meaning
Probably, this diary of Anne Frank can be considered both proof of Nazi atrocities, and an artistic and philosophical work of a young girl, and simply a monument to human strength and courage. What Anne Frank went through with her family and friends (as well as a large number of other people) is a very serious test that, fortunately, has not affected our generation of people. Persecution and hardship strengthened the character of the prisoners and, despite the fact that they were destined to die (except for Otto Frank), evidence of their moral feat is still alive today.
I have to dilute the sublime only by the fact that I personally don’t quite understand why the prisoners never tried to escape to a safer place, but rather obediently waited for how it would all end. Moreover, none of the prisoners, in general, made virtually any contribution to the victory over the regime from which they all fled first to Holland, and then spent more than 2 years in captivity, and in the end almost all died. However, I do not take responsibility to condemn these people in any way.
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Anne Frank's Diary
I hope that I can trust you with everything, as I have never trusted anyone before, I hope that you will be a huge support for me.
On Friday I woke up at six o'clock. And quite understandably - it was my birthday. But, of course, I couldn’t get up so early; I had to restrain my curiosity until a quarter to seven. But I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went to the dining room, where Mavrik, our kitten, met me and began to caress me.
At seven I ran to my mom and dad, then we all went into the living room and there we started untying and looking at the gifts. I saw you, my diary, right away, it was the most best gift. They also gave me a bouquet of roses, a cactus and cut peonies. These were the first flowers, then they brought many more.
My dad and mom bought me a bunch of gifts, and my friends just gave me gifts. I received the book “Camera Obscura”, a board game, a lot of sweets, a puzzle, a brooch, “Dutch Tales and Legends” by Josef Kozn and another wonderful book – “Daisy Goes to the Mountains”, and money. I bought “Myths” with them Ancient Greece and Rome" - wonderful!
Then Liz came to pick me up and we went to school. I treated the teachers and my whole class to candy, then lessons began.
That's it for now! I am so glad that I have you!
I didn’t write for several days, I wanted to seriously think about it - why do I need a diary at all? I have a strange feeling - I will keep a diary! And not only because I have never been involved in “writing”. It seems to me that later I and everyone in general will not be interested in reading the outpourings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. But that's not the point. I just want to write, and most importantly, I want to express everything that is in my soul.
“Paper will endure anything.” This is what I often thought on sad days, when I sat with my head in my hands and didn’t know where to go. First I wanted to sit at home, then I wanted to go somewhere, and I still didn’t move and kept thinking. Yes, paper will endure anything! I am not going to show this thick-bound notebook with the pompous title “Diary” to anyone, and if I do show it, it will be to a real friend or a real girlfriend, others will not be interested. So I said the main thing why I want to keep a diary: because I don’t have a real friend!
We need to explain, otherwise no one will understand why a thirteen-year-old girl feels so lonely. Of course, this is not entirely true. I have wonderful, kind parents, a sixteen-year-old sister and, probably, at least thirty acquaintances or so-called friends. I have a lot of fans, they don’t take their eyes off me, and during lessons they even catch my smile in the mirror.
I have many relatives, wonderful uncles and aunts, our home is cozy, in fact, I have everything - except for a girlfriend! With all my friends you can only play pranks and fool around, chat about all sorts of trifles. I have no one to talk to frankly, and I feel completely buttoned up. Maybe I myself need to be more trusting, but nothing can be done about it, it’s a pity that it turns out this way.
That's why I need a diary. But in order for me to have before my eyes a real friend, whom I have been dreaming of for so long, I will not write down only bare facts in my diary, as everyone does, I want this notebook itself to become my friend - and this friend will be called Kitty!
No one will understand anything if suddenly, out of the blue, you start corresponding with Kitty, so I’ll tell you my biography first, although this is not very interesting to me.
When my parents got married, my dad was 36 years old and my mom was 25. My sister Margot was born in 1926 in Frankfurt am Main, and I was born on June 12, 1929. We are Jews, and therefore we had to emigrate to Holland in 1933, where my father became one of the directors joint stock company"Travis." This organization is associated with the company Kolen and Co., which is located in the same building.
We had a lot of worries in our lives - like everyone else: our relatives remained in Germany, and the Nazis persecuted them. After the pogroms of 1938, both my mother’s brothers fled to America, and my grandmother came to us. She was then seventy-three years old. After the age of forty, life became difficult. First the war, then the surrender, then the German occupation. And then our suffering began. New laws were introduced, some stricter than others, and it was especially bad for the Jews. Jews had to wear a yellow star, surrender their bicycles, and Jews were forbidden to ride on trams, let alone cars. Purchases could only be made from three to five, and in special Jewish shops. After eight in the evening it was forbidden to go outside or even sit in the garden or on the balcony. It was forbidden to go to the cinema, to the theater - no entertainment! It was forbidden to go swimming, play hockey or tennis - in a word, sports were also prohibited. Jews were not allowed to visit Christians; Jewish children were transferred to Jewish schools. There were more and more restrictions.
Our whole life is spent in fear. Yoppy always says: “I’m afraid to take on something - what if it’s forbidden?”
My grandmother died in January of this year. Nobody knows how much I loved her and how much I miss her.
Since 1934 I was sent to kindergarten at the Montessorn school, and then I stayed at this school. IN last year my class teacher was our boss, Mrs. K. At the end of the year, we said goodbye to her touchingly and both cried bitterly. In 1941, Margot and I entered the Jewish gymnasium: she was in the fourth grade, and I was in the first grade.
So far, the four of us are living well. So I came to today’s day and date.
Dear Kitty!
It felt like years had passed between Sunday morning and today. So much happened, it was as if the earth had turned upside down! But, Kitty, as you can see, I’m still alive, and this, according to dad, is the most important thing.
Yes, I live, just don’t ask how and where. You probably don’t understand me at all today. I'll have to first tell you everything that happened on Sunday.
At three o'clock - Harry had just left and wanted to return soon - the bell suddenly rang. I didn’t hear anything, I lay comfortably in a rocking chair on the veranda and read. Suddenly a frightened Margot appeared at the door. “Anna, they sent a summons from the Gestapo to my father,” she whispered. “Mom has already run to van Daan.” (Van Daan is a good friend of his father and his colleague.)
I was terribly scared. A summons... everyone knows what it means: a concentration camp... Prison cells flashed in front of me - are we really going to allow our father to be taken away! “You can’t let him in!” – Margot said decisively. We sat with her in the living room and waited for my mother. Mom went to the van Daans, we need to decide whether we should go to the shelter tomorrow. The Van Daans will also leave with us - there will be seven of us. We sat in silence, unable to talk about anything. The thought of a father who suspects nothing, went to visit his charges in a Jewish almshouse, the anticipation, the heat, the fear - we were completely numb.
Anne Frank
2003 edition
Publisher: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, The Netherlands.
Translation by Yulia Mogilevskaya, [email protected]
About this book
The diary of the Dutch girl Anne Frank - one of the most famous and impressive documents about the atrocities of fascism - made her name famous throughout the world.
Anna kept a diary from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. At first she wrote only for herself, until in the spring of 1944 she heard a speech on the radio by the Minister of Education of the Netherlands, Bolkenstein. He said that all the evidence of the Dutch during the occupation period should become public property. Impressed by these words, Anna decided after the war to publish a book based on her diary.
Anna began to rewrite her notes, while she changed something, omitted pieces that seemed uninteresting to her, and added new ones from her memories. Along with this work, she continued to keep the original diary, the last entry of which is dated August 1, 1944. Three days later, on the fourth of August, eight residents of the Vault were arrested by German police.
Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl picked up Anna's notes immediately after her arrest. Miep kept them in the office desk drawer and gave them to the girl’s father, Otto Frank, when Anna’s death became reliably known.
Initially, Frank did not set himself the goal of publishing the diary, but later decided to do so, succumbing to the advice and persuasion of his friends. From the original diary and its second version, he compiled a new abridged version, published in 1947. At that time, it was not customary to speak openly about sexual topics, so Otto Frank did not include the relevant passages in the publication. He also omitted passages in which Anna spoke negatively about her mother and other inhabitants of the Vault. After all, she wrote her diary during a difficult age period - between thirteen and fifteen years - and expressed both likes and dislikes directly and openly.
Otto Frank died in 1980. He bequeathed the original of Anna's diary to the Amsterdam State Institute for Military Documentation. The Institute conducted an investigation that established the undoubted authenticity of the recordings, after which a new version of “Shelter” was published, which is a combination of Anna’s two versions. The last publication of the late nineties was supplemented by an entry on February 8, 1944 and some more passages that are still not known to the general public.
In the second version of Anna's diary, everyone acting persons, including herself, gave pseudonyms. Otto Frank preserved them partially in the first edition, leaving real names for his family members. In subsequent publications, the true names of the assistants to the inhabitants of the Vault, who by that time had gained worldwide fame, were also preserved. Of the pseudonyms, only Albert Dussel and Augusta, Hermann and Peter van Daan remained. Their corresponding true names are given below.
Van Pels family
Augusta (b. 29-9-1900), Herman (b. 31-3-1898) and Peter (b. 9-11-1929) van Pels are presented in this book as Petronella, Herman and Peter van Daan.
Fritz Pfeffer (born 1889) presented under the pseudonym Albert Dussel.
Instead of a preface
Childhood
Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, into a Jewish family. Anna's father, Otto Frank, was a retired officer, and her mother, Edith Hollander Frank, was a housewife. Anna herself was the youngest child in the Frank family. Anne's older sister, Margot Frank, was born on February 16, 1926.
After Hitler came to power in the country and the victory of the NSDAP in municipal elections in Frankfurt in 1933, Otto Frank emigrated to Amsterdam, where he became director of the joint-stock company Opekta. In September of the same year, Anna's mother moved to Amsterdam. In December, Margot joined them, and in February 1934, Anna herself.
Until the age of six, Anne Frank attended kindergarten at a Montessori school, then went to first grade at this school. There she studied until the sixth grade, and then moved to the Jewish Lyceum.
Monument to Anne Frank in Amsterdam
Life in the Shelter
In May 1940, Germany occupied the Netherlands and the occupation government began to persecute Jews.
In June 1942, a few days after Anne Frank's thirteenth birthday, Gestapo summonses were sent to them in the names of Otto and Margot. After which, on July 6, the Franks moved to a shelter set up by employees of the company Opekta, which produces jam admixtures and additives, where Otto Frank worked, at Prinsengracht 263.
Like other Amsterdam buildings along the canals, house number 263 on the Prinsengracht embankment consists of a front and a back part. An office and storage area occupy the front of the building. The back of the house is often an empty space. It was here that, with the help of his subordinates Victor Kügler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Hees and Bep Voskuijl, Otto Frank chose it as a future refuge. The entrance was disguised as a filing cabinet.
On July 13, they were joined by the Van Pels family from Osnabrück, consisting of Hermann van Pels, his wife Augusta and son Peter.
In the shelter, Anna kept a diary in letters. She wrote these letters to her fictional friend Kitty. In them, she told Kitty everything that happened to her and the other inhabitants of the shelter every day. Anna called her diary Het Achterhuis (In the back house). In the Russian version - “Refuge”. Anna made her first entry in her diary on her birthday, June 12, 1942, when she turned 13 years old. The last one was on August 1, 1944.
At first, Anna kept a diary only for herself. In the spring of 1944, she heard on the Dutch radio Oranje (the editors of this radio were evacuated to England, from where they broadcast until the end of the war) a speech by the Minister of Education of the Netherlands Bolkestein. In his speech, he called on citizens to preserve any documents that would prove the suffering of the people during the years of fascist occupation. Diaries were called one of the important documents.
Impressed by the performance, Anna decided to write a novel based on the diary. She immediately begins to rewrite and edit her diary. At the same time, she continues to update the first diary with new entries.
Anna gives pseudonyms to the inhabitants of the shelter, including herself. She first wanted to call herself Anna Aulis, then Anna Robin. Anna named the Van Pels family Petronella, Hans and Alfred Van Daan (in some publications - Petronella, Hermann and Peter Van Daan).
Arrest and deportation
In 1944, the authorities received a denunciation of a group of Jews in hiding, and on August 4, the house where the Frank family was hiding was seized by the police. The Frank family was placed in the Westerbork transit concentration camp, from where they were deported to Auschwitz on September 3. In October, Anna and Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen. In early March 1945, both sisters died of typhus within a few days of each other. The exact dates of their deaths are unknown. On March 12, 1945, the British liberated Bergen-Belsen.
The only family member to survive the Nazi camps was Anne's father, Otto Frank. After the war he returned to Amsterdam, and in 1953 he moved to Basel (Switzerland). He died in 1980.
Physical analyzes of the notebooks, paper and ink prove that all of these items were authentic and period correct. Handwriting and lettering in block letters in the diary exactly match other known entries in Anne Frank's handwriting. The diary is not a fake, it is written in the hand of Anne Frank.
Otto Frank's version faithfully reproduces his daughter's recordings. In the first edition, Otto Frank omitted some purely personal things - such as Anna's statements regarding her mother. These texts were subsequently restored.
Informer
In 1948, the Amsterdam police began a search for the traitor. According to police reports, such a person existed, but no one knew his name. All that was known was that for each Jew he received a reward of seven and a half guilders. Since Mr. Frank refused to participate in the investigation, it was stopped, but started again in 1963. By that time, the diary had become world famous, and reports came from all sides.
The story of Anne Frank became public after the publication of a documentary and later fictional version of the girl’s diary. Anna became the most famous symbol of the victims of the Nazi regime. After the wedding, the girl's parents Otto (a German businessman of Jewish origin) and Edith (who also had Jewish roots) settled in Frankfurt, Germany. Soon they had children: Margot in 1926 and Anna in 1929.
Portrait of Anne Frank
The family enjoyed these first years of happiness, but the economic crisis darkened the Franks' life. In 1933 he headed the German government. Otto and Edith became concerned about the political situation. The persecution of Jews and the economic crisis caused serious problems, the couple were looking for a way to flee the country.
Childhood and youth
Anne Frank and her older sister Margot were born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, where the girls spent a happy childhood. The daughters were close to their parents and were friends with other children in the neighborhood. In the early 1930s, the impact of the economic crisis was increasingly felt, and the political situation worsened as the influence of anti-Semitic sentiments grew stronger when the Nazis came to power.
Edith Frank waited with trepidation for the birth of Margot, Anna's older sister. The Franks' first child (Edith, Bettina) died in infancy. Three years after Margot's birth, on June 12, 1929, her younger sister, Annelies Marie, known to the world as Anna or Anne, was born. Edith writes in a children's book of memoirs about Anne that Margot saw her sister for the first time on June 14 and was sincerely worried.
The family lived on Marbachweg in Frankfurt. Anna and Margot had fun here. There were many children in the area with whom Margo played. Anna played in the sandbox in the garden. She was too little to go outside to play with her sister and other children. Margot's parents allowed her to leave the garden, and she played outside with friends. As soon as Anna learned to walk, she joined her sister. Anne's childhood friend Hilda Staab recalled that her mother and Edith loved to watch the children play through the windows or from the balcony, and they liked that the girls had so much fun together.
The children in the neighborhood came from different walks of life. Some of them are Catholics, others are Protestants or Jews. Anna and her friends were curious about each other's celebrations and traditions. So Margot and Anna were invited to Hilde's Holy Communion party, and when the Franks celebrated Hanukkah, they invited the local children to join them. The Franks were known as liberal Jews - not strict believers, but following Jewish traditions. Members of Otto's family considered themselves Germans. Reading and learning were important to Otto and his two daughters. In addition, he was interested in photography and photographed Anna and Margot playing with neighbor children. These photos are still kept in archives.
Anne and Margot loved their father very much. Together with his mother, the girls nicknamed him Pim. When Otto put his daughters to bed, he told the girls bedtime stories that he made up himself.
In 1931, Otto, Edith, Margot and Anne moved from Marburgweg to Ganghoferstrasse. They had to change their place of residence because the family did not have enough money. Frank's office, where Otto worked, was suffering losses, and Otto's income was rapidly declining. In addition, the homeowner on Marburgweg turned out to be a member of the anti-Semitic National Socialist German Workers' Party. Neighbor Hilda suspected that the Franks moved because of a difficult relationship with the landlord. However, the son of the owner of the house said later that his father was forced to join the party because otherwise he would lose his job, and not because of antipathy towards Jews.
Anne and Margot kept in touch with the children from the old quarter, even after the family moved to Marbachweg on Ganghoferstrasse in 1931. Former neighbor Gertrud Naumann missed the Franks greatly. Frank's daughters easily made friends with children in the new area.
The Franks' new house was located not far from Ludwig Richter's school, and Margot went there to study on March 6, 1932. There was a young teacher working at the school, and classes were sometimes held outside. Students were encouraged to study independently and build friendly relationships with teachers.
The Frank family lived on Gangoferstrasse for two years, and then, for financial reasons, was forced to move in with their grandmother, Otto’s mother. Margot's school was far from her new home, so she moved to another one. Otto and Edith hoped that Margot would not have problems due to her Jewish origin, but, unfortunately, they did.
Asylum
In May 1940, Nazi Germany attacked the Netherlands, and at the same time persecution of Jews began in Europe. From 1938 to 1941, Otto sought permission to emigrate to the United States. The family did not have time to obtain visas - Germany officially declared war on the United States.
In 1942, the Frank family, through their eldest daughter, was given a summons to the Gestapo demanding that they go to a concentration camp. Then Otto decided to move his family to a shelter provided by the company where Frank worked. Then the family lived in Amsterdam. The company's office at Prinsengracht 263 was located in a location where many other companies were located.
The shelter at Prinsengracht 263 was relatively spacious. There was plenty of space for two families. At that time, shelters were cramped spaces in damp basements or dusty attics. People hiding in the countryside sometimes came out into the open, but only if there was no danger of detection.
The entrance to the secret hideout was hidden behind a mobile bookcase. On August 21, 1942, Anna described in her diary that seven people were hiding in the shelter at that time. Dentist Fritz Pfeffer joins them later, on November 16, 1942.
The Franks lived in the shelter for two years. In the shelter, they kept quiet, were scared and spent time together as best they could. The prisoners were assisted by office workers Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, Miep and Jan Gies and warehouse manager Johannes Voskiil. These people brought food, clothing, books and helped the prisoners contact the outside world.
Arrest and deportation
After two years of hiding, the Frank family was discovered and deported to a concentration camp. Anna's father, Otto Frank, was the only one to survive.
On August 4, 1944, the people found in the shelter were arrested along with their assistants. The family was transferred from security headquarters to the Westerbork camp and then deported to Auschwitz. Two assistants went to the Amersfoort camp. Johannes Kleiman was released soon after his arrest, and six months later Viktor Kugler managed to escape. Immediately after the arrests, Miep Gies and Bep Voskyl rescued Anna's diary, which remained in a secret hideout. Despite the research, it was not possible to find out how the shelter was discovered.
Death of Anne Frank
Otto Frank is the only one of the eight people who survived that war. During the process of deportation from the Netherlands, he learned that Edith had died. But Otto was never able to receive news about his daughters and hoped to find the girls. At the beginning of July he returned to Amsterdam and went to Miep and Jan Gies, where he spent seven years.
Memorial to Anne Frank and her sister Margot on the site of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Otto Frank tried to find his daughters, but in July he received news of death: the girls had died as a result of illness and hardship in Bergen-Belsen. Miep Gies then gave Otto Anna's diary. Otto read the diary.
Anne Frank's Diary
After her death, Anna became world famous thanks to the diary she wrote while hiding in a shelter. Shortly before the family was forced into hiding, Anna received a diary as a birthday present. She started recording immediately, and while living in the shelter, the girl wrote about all the events. In addition, Anna wrote short stories and collected quotes from other writers in her “Book of Beautiful Sentences.”
When the Dutch Minister of Education put out a call on British radio asking people to keep war diaries, Anna decided to change the diary and create a novel called Secret Shelter. The girl began to rewrite the diary, but at this time the family was discovered and arrested.
Anna wrote in her diary that she wanted to become a writer or journalist in the future and hoped to publish the diary as a novel. Friends convinced Otto Frank that the diary had high artistic value, and on June 25, 1947, The Secret Annexe released 3,000 copies. This was followed by many more publications and translations, a play and a film.
People all over the world learned the story of Anne Frank. For 10 years, Otto Frank answered thousands of letters from people who read his daughter's diary. In 1960, the Anne Frank House became a museum.
Memory
Otto Frank has repeatedly said in an interview that he is proud of his daughter. Anne Frank's diary is, at its core, a story of faith, hope and love in the face of hate. For two years, Anne Frank hid from the Nazis with her family in a secret hideout in Amsterdam, writing daily diary entries to pass the time. Some entries poignantly convey the depth of despair into which the girl sometimes fell.
“I’ve reached the point where it doesn’t matter to me whether I live or die,” Anna wrote on February 3, 1944. "The world will go on without me, and there is nothing I can do to change events."
“When I write, I can get rid of all my worries,” she wrote on April 5, 1944.
Anne Frank's Diary Years After tragic death The girl was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and a museum was created in the house where the family hid. In memory of the courageous girl, a street in one of the cities of Israel and even an asteroid were named after her.
From the mid-twentieth century to the present, five films have been made about the biography of Anne Frank and her diary. And based on the girl’s notes, a book entitled “Refuge” was published in 2010. Diary in letters."
Anne Frank's diary is one of the most famous artifacts of World War II. Historian Alvin Rosenfeld says that people are introduced to the Nazi era through Anna more than through anyone else except Hitler. But Anna's diary is not just a story about the war. This is also a sincere confession of a teenage girl, full of psychologism, a story of growing up, relevant at all times.
The MIF publishing house published a graphic version of Anne Frank's diary. We selected several interesting fragments from it.
Notebook with checkered cover
Anne Frank was born in Germany in 1929. The persecution of Jews forced the family to move to the Netherlands, but this country was soon occupied by the Nazis. When Anna's sister received a summons from the SS, the Franks decided to hide in a secret shelter - a hidden part of an office building. In addition to Anna, her father, mother and sister, 4 more people settled there.
On her thirteenth birthday, Anna received a notebook with a checkered cover as a gift from her dad. She decided to use it as a diary. Turning to her imaginary friend Kitty, Anna talks about her life - first in freedom, then in shelter. She describes the relationships between neighbors, her thoughts and feelings, news and thoughts about the war.
Life in the Shelter
How will eight people behave if they find themselves in a confined space for many months? Anna's diary has the answer to this question - and it is not a very pleasant one. Most of the time, the inhabitants of the shelter argue over small things and talk about each other.
“It’s so strange to me that adults quarrel so quickly, so often and about all sorts of little things. Until now, I always thought that arguing was a childish habit that goes away later. Of course, sometimes there may be a reason for a real quarrel. But this eternal squabble here with us is nothing more than squabbles. They use the word discussion instead of quarrel, which, of course, is completely wrong, but the Germans haven’t come up with anything better!”
Even in tragic circumstances, life takes its toll: every day you need to cook dinner, wash and get along with your neighbors. It doesn't always come easy.
Anna thinks a lot about her relationships with her parents, sister and neighbors. Sometimes her remarks are full of sarcasm, sometimes tenderness, sometimes a cry for help.
“Lately I feel so abandoned, there is some kind of big emptiness around me. I had never thought much about this before, and entertainment and friends occupied all my thoughts. Now I think either about misfortunes or about myself.”
War
Anna's diary does not contain much of the horrors of the Holocaust: only scant news about what is happening around her gets beyond the walls of the shelter. But the war penetrates Anna’s consciousness: she thinks about those who remained outside the shelter and those who ended up in the camps.
“No matter what I do, I can’t help but think about those who are missing. As soon as I laugh at something, I remember in horror and say to myself: it’s a shame that I’m having so much fun.”
Growing up
And yet Anna remains an ordinary teenager who goes through the process of growing up, learns to cope with emotions, to find common language with others. Starting the diary with accusations against her family and neighbors, Anna gradually becomes calmer, more reasonable and wiser, and learns to understand herself. And, like every teenager, she desperately needs support.
“One day Anna is considered so intelligent, and she can know everything, and the next day I hear again that Anna is still a little stupid sheep who knows nothing and imagines that she has learned surprisingly a lot from books! But I’m no longer a child or a pampered girl, whose actions you can also laugh at. I have my own ideals, ideas and plans, but I still don’t know how to express them in words.”
First love
There is also time for first love - Anna becomes close to Peter, the son of her neighbors in the shelter. Sympathy arises between them. Anna and Peter find support and meaning in each other, and Anna discovers new traits in herself.
“Something incredible happened to me yesterday: for the first time I realized that there was actually not one Anne Frank, but two. Peter and I, as usual, were sitting on the sofa, and then suddenly the ordinary Anna disappeared, and her place was taken by another Anna, completely different from the first - mocking and impudent, another Anna, who has one desire - to love and be meek and gentle. .
