Chapter 39: The Diary Of Anne Frank
A Silenced Voice Still Speaks
The Diary of Anne Frank should be read by every American. Today.
What can be said about this immortal book that has not been said already? It is a tragedy beyond tragedy. It is an inspiration beyond inspiration.
For us in the United States today, it is a warning.
Annelies Marie Frank was a Jew born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. Anne’s father, Otto Frank (1889–1980), decided to leave Germany after the Nazis came to power in January of 1933. He found a new home for himself and for his family in Amsterdam. His wife, Edith (1900–1945), his elder daughter Margot (1926–1945), as well as Anne (1929-1945) were all settled in the Netherlands by February of 1934.
The Germans occupied the Netherlands in May of 1940, and they brought their hatred of Jews with them. On July 5, 1942, Margot Frank received “a call-up notice from the SS.”1 She was to report to a labor camp in Germany. The next day, the family went into hiding in a building (the Secret Annex) adjoining the location of her father Otto’s company. The Frank family, along with four other Jewish refugees with whom they were in hiding, were found by the Germans on August 4, 1944. They were all put on a train to Germany. It was the last convoy of Jews to leave Amsterdam before it was liberated by the Allies.2
Seven of the eight people deported to Germany died in concentration camps there. Only Otto Frank survived. On his return to Amsterdam, friends gave him Anne’s diary, which he knew she had been keeping but which, at her request, he had never opened. It was originally published in Dutch on June 25, 1947. The Diary has since been translated into more than 70 languages and has sold over 30 million copies. It has inspired a play and a movie.3
Anne Frank “being dead, yet speaketh.”4
Every one of the millions of people who have read the diary knows that Anne died soon after the last entry. And they know that she died in unimaginable circumstances at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, saw a concentration camp for the first time on April 12, 1945, soon after it had been liberated by American soldiers. His comment: "We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.”5
Anne was given the diary as a gift on June 12, 1942, her thirteenth birthday. “I hope,” she writes in the Diary’s first sentence, “I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”6 That hope, at least, was realized. On June 20, Anne named the Diary “Kitty.” It was to be the “one true friend” which she had been seeking. 7
In the early days of the Diary, Anne is leading an interesting, even exciting, life. She has many acquaintances. But soon, everything changes.
On July 10, Anne writes her first entry from the Secret Annex in which she and her family are in hiding. It took a few days after her new circumstances for Anne “to think about the enormous change in my life.”8 She has “plenty of dreams, but the reality is we’ll have to stay here until the war is over.”9 Her relationship with her mother grows difficult, but her father is “always so nice. He understands me perfectly, and I wish we could have a heart-to-heart talk sometime without my bursting instantly into tears.”10 Anne wanted to be daddy’s little girl, but she also wanted to be all grown up.
And in the next two years, the reader sees this altogether remarkable girl turn into a budding young woman. She experiences the changes in her body associated with puberty. She begins to talk about what she will “let my own children read.”11 (Every sentence in the Diary delivers dramatic irony. We know what is going to happen to Anne. She will not live to teach children anything.) We learn, among other things, that she longs “for trust, love and physical affection.”12
“[R]eports of the dreadful things being done to the Jews” reach the Annex.13 Although Anne notes these horrors, she does her best not to dwell on them. And she makes room in her heart for others. “The Christians in Holland are also living in fear because their sons are being sent to Germany.”14
The Diary is too rich to summarize briefly. It must be read cover to cover. Once you pick it up, you will find it difficult to put down. It is astonishing how much it contains, given that for almost the whole period the Diary covers Anne lives in the Annex. She can never go outside. But she does manage a touching romance with a boy who is in hiding with the Frank family. And she has a vivid and rich inner life. Her self-awareness is awesome.
Equally astonishing is Anne’s lack of self-pity. This young woman is confined in a highly artificial environment. She does not meet new people. She has no communal life, in a school classroom, for example. It is striking when she exclaims to Kitty, “If only I could leave here!”15 Such exclamations are rare.
Anne “imagine[s] the kind of mom I’d like to be to my children later on.”16 And “[j]ust imagine,” she writes, “how forgetful I’ll be when I’m eighty.”17 Every reader knows that she will not make it to 16.
“Which of the people here,” she confides to Kitty, “would suspect that so much is going on in the mind of a teenage girl?”18 No one, of course. Even her father was amazed at the inner life of his cherished daughter when he read her Diary after the war.19
Anne is a young woman who would have made a wonderful wife. “Love,” she asks Kitty, “What is Love? I don’t think you can really put it into words. Love is understanding someone, caring for him, sharing his joys and sorrows. This eventually includes physical love. You’ve shared something, given something away and received something in return. . . .”20
Anne listens to the broadcast of Dutch Cabinet ministers speaking from exile in London. On March 29, 1944, one of them said that there would be a collection of diaries dealing with the war after it was over. Everyone in the Annex “pounced on my Diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annex. . . . [T]en years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding.”21 What we know – but of course she did not have a hint – is that millions of people would find it heartbreaking.
On May 3, Anne writes that “I feel liberation drawing near.”22 At last, June 6, 1944. “The invasion has begun.”23 It was six days before her fifteenth birthday. On July 21, the day after the assassination attempt on Hitler: “I’m finally getting optimistic. . . . [T]he prospect of going back to school in October is making me too happy to be logical!”24
Tuesday, August 1, 1944. This is the day of the final entry in the Diary.
But before we leave it, we must quote the most famous observation. Anne writes on July 15, 1944:
“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”25
The Diary was described above as tragic and inspirational. One has to read it with care to appreciate its impact. Its intensity.
The Diary was also described as a warning. Of what?
We all must look at what is happening in the United States of America right now. Alarms should be going off.
Take for one dreadful example, the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Mr. Abrego Garcia was seized in Baltimore, Maryland, and deported to a terrifying prison in El Salvador on March 15. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement organization admitted that deporting him was “an administrative error.”26 On April 10, the Supreme Court ruled that deporting him to El Salvador was illegal.27
Mr. Abrego Garcia has not yet been returned to his wife and children in Baltimore. Trump and his endless legion of lackeys are doing what they can to prevent justice from being done.
On April 17, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a brief opinion asserting in effect that Mr. Abrego Garcia must be returned to the United States. Wilkinson was elevated to the bench in 1984 by Ronald Reagan. He is a lifelong conservative. He wrote:
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process.”28
If the Constitution and the rule of law do not work for everyone, they do not work for anyone.
Otto Frank, December 24, 1967. Words to live by:
“To build up the future, you have to know the past.
You see, I’m pretty old now.
But I’m not a bitter man.”29
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank (New Dehli: Prakash Books, e-book) Loc 287, 298.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nWUlZqsh2gQ&t=361s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl; https://www.britannica.com/story/anne-franks-diary
Hebrews 11:4
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/ohrdruf-concentration-camp
Diary, Loc. 50.
Diary, Loc. 128.
Diary, Loc. 381.
Diary, Loc. 426.
Diary, p. 187.
Diary, p. 6.
Diary, p. 188.
Diary, p. 13.
Diary, p. 23.
Diary, p. 60.
Diary, p. 70.
Diary, p. 159.
Diary, p. 70.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWRBinP7ans
Diary, p. 100.
Diary, p. 127.
Diary, p. 151.
Diary, p. 170.
Diary, p. 185.
Diary, p. 184.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-documents-government-case-mistakenly-deported-abrego-garcia-gang-rcna201665
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
https://time.com/7278774/judge-harvie-wilkinson-opinion-read-full-text-trump-abrego-garcia/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWRBinP7ans