Review #4: Anne Frank's Journal

Who is more prominent: Perpetrators vs victims? Hitler and his Nazi collaborators or holocaust victims and casualties? Maria Mandl or Rena Kornreich Gelissen ? David Irving or Victor Frankl? It’s for us, as readers and humans, to decide whether to remember evil people and enumerate their evils and misdeeds or commemorate the victims of dictatorships and genocides regardless of their religion and political opinions. Personally, I’ll go for this charming smile below!

Anne Frank is more prominent and potent than all the Nazi collaborators. Despite her young age and the horrific experience she went through, she could immortalize her name in political and literary history and leave an undeniable proof about what happened in that era. Her diary is not a mere notebook where a child jotted down trivial thoughts and feelings; it’s a significant historical account about the ordeal of Jews in the Holocaust. In fact, Anne’s family was compelled to go into hiding in a building owned by her father Otto Frank’s company with the Van Dann family after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Anne was only thirteen year old, but she was endowed with magnificent intellectual skills and unbelievable depth of thought.

From the outset, Anne Frank innocently talks with her diary: she chooses to give it a fictitious dimension by dubbing it Kitty and addressing it as a friend and not mere passive papers. Then, she introduces her family and relates everyday activities. Her throwbacks were centred on how her life looked like before the Nazi occupation: her school, schoolmates and friends. The stark opposition between the past and the present is heart-rending and poignant. Her life in the secret annexe is utter torture as the conditions are very bad: lack of hygiene, food, facilities, entertainment and even space. The hardships she encountered are just too big for a little girl to handle. She is to remain secluded indoors waiting for a miracle to emancipate her. However, the bleakness of the real present and the blurriness of the future couldn’t thwart Anne from unceasingly clings to hope and puts plans about future life. Anne didn’t succumb to the reality and she dared challenging it and by doing so she, unintentionally, made of herself an emblem of resistance.