Sunday, June 12, is Anne Frank Day.
Anne was born June 12, 1929. Few people know of the legacy that goes beyond Anne Frank’s famous diary. Unknown to many is that between the ages of 13 and 15 she wrote fairy tales, essays, short stories and the beginnings of a novel. Five notebooks and more than 300 loose pages, all written during her two years in hiding, survived the war.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has an online exhibit that is worth reading to learn more about this iconic young lady who left an enduring legacy that has touched millions the world over. “An Unfinished Story”, through sound and images, reveals more about Anne previously not known to those who know of her story.
Her diary chronicles her life from the age of 13 through 15, and right before when she and her family members were taken to Auschwitz: a happy life in Germany in the 1920s for the Frank family—Otto Frank (father), Edith Frank (mother), and Margot (Anne’s sister); emigration to Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1933; the German invasion of 1940; the forced wearing of the yellow stars:
The loss of freedoms and the segregated restrictions that Anne, her family, and all Jews under the Nazis suffered:
“Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees. Jews were required to wear a yellow star. Jews were required to turn in their bicycles. Jews were forbidden to use trams. Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields. Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes. Jews were required to attend Jewish schools. You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that.” June 20, 1942″
The annex, the secret hiding place, located at 263 Prinsengracht, where Anne, her family along with the van Pels family (Hermann, Auguste, and Peter) and Fritz Pfeffer all hid. The fear and terror of being discovered; the brave and loyal Miep Gies.
While in hiding those two years, Anne pours herself into writing. She writes short stories and collects her favourite sentences by other writers in a notebook. She hopes that one day her diary, which she entitled The Secret Annex, will be published, as a novel, after the war. But, she never finishes it. She is discovered, and arrested, before she completes her work. Her last entry was written on August 1, 1944.
On August 4, 1944, everyone in the Secret Annex is arrested. Someone has betrayed them. They are deported first to the Westerbork transit camp, and then on to Auschwitz. Otto Frank is the only person from the Secret Annex to survive the camps. The others all die. Hermann van Pels is murdered in the gas chambers, Peter dies of exhaustion, and Auguste is thrown in front of a train during a transport. Fritz Pfeffer died of enterocolitus at Neuengamme Concentration Camp.
In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Anne ends up in the same barracks as her mother and sister. Edith Frank dies of starvation at Auschwitz. Later, Anne and Margot are taken to Bergen-Belsen. Anne, and her sister Margot, both die of typhus in Bergen-Belsen, March 1945. Anne was 15 years old.
The identity of their betrayer has never been established.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was posthumously published in 1947. It has been translated into 70 languages, and adapted to film and theater. People the world over got to know Anne, but, her diary is only a glimpse into her heart and mind.
The launching of the U.S. Holocaust Museum online exhibit gives us more knowledge of Anne, and offers us a view into the mind of a budding writer. A young girl who was more than just her unfinished diary.
Anne’s writings reveal a young woman who had great ambition to be a writer and was just beginning to explore her craft. Her works combine “adolescent imagination and playfulness with mature insight and self-awareness”.
RELATED LINKS:
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Ann
