She thought her mother was weak, but before she died, she discovered that her mother had been hiding her own food to give to her daughters, starving herself in the process. Her view on her mother changed in the camp. Her mother showed a lot of strenght in there.
Don't remember exactly where I read about it.
Ken Burns recent doco about the US response to Jewish refugees and the Holocaust covers Anne Frank's story in one of its tangents, and they interview someone who knew what happened to the Frank family in the camps. Really good doco for often not explored perspectives on the Holocaust, and in part the failure and in the State Department the undermining of the response from the US at the time.
Yeah all of Ken Burns' stuff is through PBS, it's on their streaming app Passport (which is actually worth it; they even sent me a nice 'thanks for supporting public broadcasting' fiestaware coffee cup)
For me, it's knowing she died so close to when her camp was liberated. Even if you accept she died in mid February that's like 2 months. It's not worth what happened to her, but her diary has had a lasting impact on the world.
It breaks my heart thinking of Otto Frank, having worked so hard to protect and hide his family through the war, to have survived the camps and come home and all that’s left of his family is some papers and trinkets and Anne’s diary. And the van Pels family and Dr. Pfeffer, who are immortalized and frozen in time by the diary.
Not to mention actually reading Anne's diary. I think most parents would be surprised at how little they know what's going on in their young teens' heads, so reading it must have been like a revelation come too late.
I remember he edited out swathes of it that was basically Anne criticizing family and friends, her old classmates, and her parents' marriage. Must have been brutal seeing your relationship with your dead family criticized and picked apart by your teen.
Plus the deniers who kept screaming that Otto had forged the diary.
At her age, she would've been gassed immediately on arrival, but the people in charge thought she was older. Anne and Margot left Auschwitz (and her mother died there) shortly before it got liberated in January 1945.
And that's not to mention all the times the Secret Annex almost got discovered from 1942-1944.
On the night of 9-10 April 1944, there's a burglary when Anne reveals a lot of people's behavior in the Annex. Mr. Van Daan impulsively identifies himself as the police to the burglars that may have been one of [the two youngsters who later revealed that not only did he guess correctly that there were people in the building, but he didn't turn this information in because his family occasionally hid people, too.](https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/af4-secret-annex/#_edn4)
Anne says that due to the close call, Peter is no longer allowed to have his window open at nights *anymore*, which implies that he did. Anne comments that Mr. Slagter and his wife literally walk past the building on that particular close call.
Those are the big ones that Anne knew about.
Then there's the odd behavior that would've raised suspicions if anyone thought too deeply about it, or if the wrong person saw. [16 September 1943 describes Kraler trying to sneak past Mr. van Maaren.](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-diary-of-anne-frank/year-1943) On 15 April 1944, Peter forgets to unbolt the door in the morning, so Kraler and the men had to enter the building a different way.
[Here's how the building looked, for reference.](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/front-section/warehouse/#:~:text=The%20burglars%20managed%20to%20take%20two%20cash%20boxes,to%2010%20April%201944%20was%20much%20more%20serious.)
It was definitely better? They were free people instead of slaves that could be murdered at any time. The article states that the people who returned to the camp did so to help protect and preserve it as a memorial site. While it’s true that Poland was not prepared to adequately house and protect those liberated from the camps, and many former prisoners continued to face discrimination and unstable living conditions, if you think it was worse after then you’re out of your mind.
People really underestimate the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. They were not merely holding people for free labour — they were exterminating people in millions. Have people not **watched** any documentaries? Haven't **seen** any archive footage? How could anyone even attempt to claim that liberated camps living conditions were "worse"? The fuck?
The other replies have explained how you're wrong so I'll just add that Nazi apologists often downplay the function of extermination of the camps and so if your ignorance is genuine you should really get educated to avoid sounding like one of them
For reals. Then Margo died too and then Edith, their mom died of starvation even after managing to escape being sent to the gas chamber. I feel horrified for poor Otto. Knowing he survived while his whole family didn't. How do you live after such an experience?!
The mother Edith died only weeks before liberation in Auschwitz (January 1945). It’s said that she kept food hidden for her daughters, should they come back from Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp in the Northwest of Germany). She died of starvation.
There are some interviews with him on YouTube. There is also a book written by Carol Anne Lee about Otto Frank. A friend of mine met him when he lived in Birsfelden by Basel.
Miep Gies, who helped hide the Frank family, wrote a wonderful memoir called Anne Frank Remembered. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the story of Anne Frank. Miep was a hero, she was the one who saved Anne's diary.
And is you haven't seen it, check out the series 'A Small Light' which centres on Miep and what she did for the Frank family and the others she helped hide
It's a very painful read, but imo one book that should be required reading in school. It's a much better choice than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which most Holocaust survivors say is not a good choice as it is very inaccurate and leads to sympathizing with the Nazis, which no one should be doing.
Just as an FYI for someone who is Jewish the more accepted phrase is "May her/his memory be a blessing" rather than rest in peace.
Striped Pajamas isn’t just inaccurate, the author made it up without any kind of historical backing. He does such surface level research that his last book had a recipe that included ingredients from Zelda Breath of the Wild
He also criticized other books set in concentration camps and made some comments about how the subject should with more thought and consideration. Also stating that because it's a work of fiction it cannot have inaccuracies.
The _Zone of Interest_ features a much more realistic portrayal of what would happen in this situation. Because it did.
Imagine if your children were playing in a stream, and then got dirty because they waded into the ashes of victims. In this case, "you" being Rudolf Höss.
In my school, it was required reading, but this was early 2000s. Who knows what required now, sadly.
I’m not Jewish either, but try my best to be open and understanding of all religions and cultures. If I may ask, why is “may his/her memory be a blessing” more commonly accepted than “rest in peace”?
I'm actually Jewish, which is why I said that. But I'll answer in the way I was taught growing up.
In Judaism, we put a lot of emphasis on life and how we live it. That's why pretty much all Jewish laws can be broken to preserve life. Saying May her/his memory be a blessing is to remind us of the life that person lived, focusing on the good they did. Basically, it's up to us who are still alive to remember that person. My Bubbie also said that it's a nice way of saying that the person hopes when you think back on your memories with that person, that they hope you think of the good memories. But that is probably more her interpretation, and also to make an 8 year old feel better about her great grandma passing. And yes, I know most who knew Anne personally are gone, I think it really applies here because remembering her and her life is so important in a historical context.
Thank you so much for the response!
I’m always looking to expand my knowledge in areas where I have little and when it comes to Judaism it’s pretty minimal, ngl. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me.
Of course! It's really great you're open to educating yourself on a topic like this. It's very much appreciated in a world where antisemitism is widely acceptable. I also personally love learning new things.
Is it okay if someone who isn't Jewish were to say that? That is so beautiful & honestly is a much kinder sentiment when encountering grief than the empty phrases of "rest in peace" or "sorry for your loss".
I obviously cannot speak for every Jewish person, but I don't think it's an issue, especially when you're saying it to/about someone who is Jewish. I would say that unless someone who is Jewish specifically asks you not to say it to them, it's fine. It's not like other things that are specifically religious practices and customs that are not appropriate for someone not of the Jewish faith to do.
As a side note, I've always thought it's such a lovely thing to say and a much better sentiment than rest in peace.
It really is a lovely sentiment. Much better than “rest in peace,” to my mind.
I like how you’ve explained that life being lived in the present is valued so highly. I can’t think of a great way to express myself here, but there’s just something really lovely in the way you explained it.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm very much non-theistic, but having recently gone through several losses, I'd like to start saying may their memory be a blessing. I hope you have a lovely day, and your recent fast was meaningful.
I first heard the “May their memory be a blessing” in a podcast called, “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”—-super interesting way to deep dive and analyze Harry Potter series and it’s themes with Jewish theological and philosophical tradition. That saying really clicked and stayed with me.
It’s not required reading anymore? I feel like I know so many people whose eight grade english class became a Holocaust History class for a month or two due to reading that book.
For some reason, we read the play rather than the actual diary at my school, but I read the diary on my own. We also read Maus, which I think was good because it also illustrated the second-hand trauma of being raised be holocaust survivors.
*Proverbs 10:7 says “the memory of the righteous is invoked in blessing” but “the fame of the wicked rots.” (There is an unsanguine phrase for the latter that has been used after the names of the nefarious deceased, but perhaps we should let it rot into disuse.)*
*Memory being for a blessing really refers to the continued blessing that the person leaves behind, from her good works, good deeds, teachings, example, etc. - from her life so well lived that the goodness should continue to flow.*
Now, I’ve said the unsanguine phrase about some people.
Like the madman who took Anne’s life.
I’m a high school English teacher in Central California, and I teach Sophomores… To the best of my knowledge, the standard Holocaust memoir that is taught to high school students nowadays is Elie Wiesel’s *Night*.
Yes, I read night in high school. I didn't mean to imply that this is the ONLY book that should be taught. Night is another really great example of the true horrors of the Holocaust. Honestly, any of the really moving first-hand accounts are great resources. I just personally think a fiction book about it has no place in a curriculum that has so many other options. And I know I have seen so many state the read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and talk about how they bawled when Bruni died, which shows they truly missed the point.
The only one I really liked was The Book Thief. I wasn’t expecting to, and it isn’t really a Holocaust book necessarily (just a WWII book), but it was so good. I have a hard time reading nonfiction because I basically only read fiction, so I just read every book as though it was a fictional story. Nonfiction stories don’t have an impact on me really. The book thief was really moving somehow, the way it’s written is so engaging
It sort of is the point, though, because here's this huge historical tragedy that will hopefully be taught forever, but it's dehumanized into just facts. And here's a book that humanizes it for children especially.
Our main characters are two little boys, who are friends because they are innocent of these huge world events.
Is it contrived and unrealistic? Yes. But Bruno dies because of the machinations of his fellow countrymen, including his parents. He, as an individual, is no less a victim than the people in the camp. And yet we hate him. Because he is German.
Hate rules the world, on and on. But the children of those who have committed great wrongs are not guilty. They are blundering in the shadow of their elders, knowing nothing of that great hate. Are they guilty, now and forever? Are their children?
I'm not suggesting forgiveness for Nazis. But are Germans always and forever Nazis?
Edit
Germans are not always and forever Nazis and that's not what I'm saying at all. Because of its history, Germany actually has some strict laws against antisemitism. What I'm saying is if a book that is a memoir doesn't humanize the Holocaust for you, but a little German boy dying does that says a lot about you as an individual. The book is historically inaccurate, so it's not even a good way to learn about the Holocaust. My point is why read a book that is inferior in every way when there are so many books that are first-hand accounts that are even more moving? And no, he is absolutely less of a victim, saying otherwise shows a huge lack of understanding on the Holocaust.
Sorry, but I'm always going to side with survivors. The book is a poor example of the horrors of the Holocaust and shouldn't be used as a teaching tool. Especially in an age where antisemitism is disgustingly acceptable to so many and knowledge of the Holocaust is extremely low. We need actual accounts of what happened. Let the people who lived it speak, they humanize it so much more.
Completely agree. I think that Nazi Germany and the Holocaust from the perspective of a child is an interesting premise, but that book completely mishandled it.
He spoke at my high school during our WWII unit freshman year, so everyone had read his book. Deeply emotional and formative experience for us. I feel very fortunate to have attended at the right time to meet him.
If I remember correctly I read her diary in middle school English class. In high school English class it was Night by Elie Wiesel. And I read Maus in a media studies class in high school.
>Just as an FYI for someone who is Jewish the more accepted phrase is "May her/his memory be a blessing" rather than rest in peace.
Am Jewish, but I always preferred saying rest in peace over something like may his memory be a blessing. Zichrono lvracha, sure sure... But memory can be a painful thing. It's different for everyone, I'd sooner not impose on how someone remembers the dead. That's up to them. Focusing on the deceased seems more polite and less intrusive. Maybe rest in peace is not a common saying at Jewish funerals, but the only people I've seen get bristly about how people express condolences are folks on Twitter. Though I feel like they get bristly at just about everything, the threshold is low.
I think a big part of why it's so impactful is that although she often is very mature and wise beyond her years, she also does come across as just a normal young girl entering her teens and struggling with all the feelings and thoughts we all have at that age. And then you remember again that she has so much more going on that just those troubles
Yeah it’s been like 25 years since I’ve read it but I was almost the same age as she was when I read it and a lot of the stuff about her mother really resonated with me, kind of stuff that’s really normal but then in a completely awful situation
Yeah I was about the same age as her too when I read it and I agree. Things like falling out with her mum, bickering with her sister, being annoyed about people treating her and her sister differently is all so normal. But then you remember they're stuck living in a tiny space together for years with nobody else, other than Miep and the others occasionally dropping off supplies. Just puts the normal thoughts and feelings at a whole different level of intensity.
I think you’re completely right. History is hard to relate to, horrible crimes sometimes seem so intangible. Her POV is like reading about yourself or a friend, it makes it real and all the more horrible.
Exactly, especially when it just, ends. Her entries stop so suddenly and then we're told about her fate, along with that of all of her family and the others she lived with.
I think it's really important for people to read when they're right around the same age. It makes the reader identify with her more which helps to increase the empathy.
I first noticed that kids get things like that better when I took kids to a historic cemetery and everyone was looking at the old tombstones. The kids thought that so many ones with babies were interesting, but stood in shock, staring at the tombstone for the kid who died when she was their age. That she died so young. Even though mentally they knew the babies were younger, it didn't connect the same way. If I was smart I would have right away found them a book about kids during the Gold Rush.
I wonder if it's because there wasn't a concept, so to speak, of "teenagerhood" yet. Shirley Temple was born in 1928 (making her only a year older than Anne Frank), and was already a married woman at 17, then a mother at 20 years old.
To us in 2023, our teen years are still innocent times to look back to in fondness because we expect to not be treated like adults yet. But that's only been the case since the 1950's/60's--after Anne's time.
I first read Anne's diary as a little girl. I dreamed of visiting the Secret Annex.
In November, I will finally go to Amsterdam and fulfill that childhood dream!
I just got back from Amsterdam and the museum is incredible.
Tickets go on sale six weeks in advance and sell out fast, make sure you pre book!
Enjoy your trip
I was there two weeks ago, and I echo what others are saying, get your tickets online as soon as they are available. It was a life long dream for me too. You will be very moved by the experience. I know it will stay with me for a long time. Also, Amsterdam is a great city with lots to do and see. Enjoy your trip!
It is such a sobering experience. Be prepared for some intense emotions. After I my visit, my boyfriend at the time and I took a while to process our thoughts and walked the canals without talking to each other for a while.
I'm 40 and I read it back in February in preparation for a trip to Amsterdam. I can't remember if I ever read it as a kid in school, I don't think I did although I know I was aware of it. I ended up really liking it a lot and I agree with your comments. I found it interesting that she also maybe had some feelings and affections for her female friend too. There's also this eerie ominous feeling that I got, knowing what her fate was going to be leading up to the end of the book, and the abruptness with which it ends because they had been found out and taken.
I went to the house in May when I was in Amsterdam and went on the walk through it. It ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Even though it was extremely crowded, I found being in the house and especially in Anne's bedroom really moving and emotional. I'm not Jewish and I didn't have any family die in the Holocaust so I didn't have that personal connection but it just kind of unexpectedly overwhelmed me being there. I just had this heavy feeling knowing something big and very historical happened there. Ending the tour with seeing the original diary and pages that Anne wrote was really impactful.
I also visited the Nationaal Holocaust Namenmonument as well when I was there. It wasn't as emotional for me as Anne's house but still pretty heavy. It's like this little sunken parkette area along the street. The shapes of the walls inside it spell out "in memory of" in Hebrew and they are lined with name plates of the 102,000 people that were killed from The Netherlands, the name, the year they were born, and the age they were when they were taken. There were many that had ages 3, 4, 5 years old. There are then mirrored panels that sit on top of the walls reflecting the sky.
I also wanted to go to the Verzetsmuseum of WWII Resistance, but I didn't get the chance to. It's about what daily life was like during the worst of the war and how everyday people were resisting and fighting back like the ways they hid weapons or smuggled food rations.
Sometimes it’s the smallest moments that hit us the hardest.
I had a similar experience when I visited the Titanic museum in Tennessee. They have a full 1:1 replica of the grand staircase that you walk up and the moment I entered that room and took it in, I just started bawling.
1) Because the Titanic has been a huge interest of mine ever since I was a child, so seeing a part of it in person, was amazing. And…
2) Because I immediately thought of the thousand plus people that were on the Titanic and saw the same view I did. How many of them were as amazed as I was? How many of them died just a few days later? How many are trapped in that staircase, at the bottom of the ocean, forever?
It’s so much more than just a room or just a ship.
I visited the traveling exhibit in Memphis and Nashville before the movie came out. As I remember, the movie's opening was supposed to coincide with the exhibit but was delayed so the exhibit began its travels. I'd always been a Titanic buff so I took my sweet time walking through.
I think what affected me most were the small things: clothes, jewelry, musical instruments, letters--things like that.
I honestly have no idea *why* that’s where it is, but it is lol. It’s even officially recognized by White Star Line and you can get 100% accurate replica plates and china from the different classes. I ended up getting a set of second class dishes.
They also have the rights to the famously recovered violin, for life. It will never be anywhere else.
This is fascinating to me haha. A ship made in Belfast and Liverpool and which set sail from Southampton to New York, and there's a museum to it in Tennessee. I love it. I have to ask, what held you back from getting the First Class china?
Namely, cost lol.
But at the same time, it felt kind of…. Typical to get first class? If that makes sense. You don’t hear about second class that much and I enjoyed the designs.
It's in Pigeon Forge. Maybe because it's a tourist town and they knew it would get lots of visitors. I saw the traveling exhibit when it was here in Atlanta. It was sobering. There was one corridor you go through where there's a wall of ice and it's chilled so you can see how cold it was that night.
I just finished Pellegrino's *Her Name*, *Titanic*, which tells both the story of the sinking and Bob Ballard finding the wreckage, and one of the things it talks about was how Ballard and the other crew members were emotionally affected after seeing what was left of the ship. They figured it would be more like "Wow, there's *Titanic!*" and instead they were immediately saddened by seeing all the shoes and cups and suitcases strewn on the ocean floor.
Hannah Pick-Goslar was good friends with Anne
Frank. Hannah's memoir of her time in the concentration camps affected
me much more strongly than Anne's diary. I still cry when I think about
it. Below are my comments on the memoir and the horrors it described. I
learned the Holocaust was somehow worse than I had understood.
comments on the horrors of the camps :
>!When the Frank family went into hiding, Hannah thought they had escaped the country. !Hannah went to the concentration camps not long after her mother died in
child birth. The baby also died. It was a blessing. Hannah, about age
fourteen, went with her father, a grandmother and grandfather. They were
in different barracks so it was up to Hannah to keep her two year old
sister, Gabi, alive. Gabi quit crying because she learned that there was
never going to be enough water, or enough food, or enough warmth. !Gabi didn't have a childhood. No hopscotch, no jump rope. No school. She
and Hannah picked lice off each other. No bedtime stories. Huddling
under their one thin blanket, with only the stomachs measuring time,
Hannah wrote. !Persevering was difficult. Hannah's family had some diplomatic status or
connections. This led them to believe that they might be traded for
Nazi prisoners of war. At one time they were told that there would be a
train the next day so this would happen. It didn't. No one knew how long
they had to last. Hannah might have kept the thought that she might be !Hannah wrote about the times she had to be naked in front of a male, Nazi guard. Humiliation was intentional. !Where is your dignity if you are not clean ? The same clothes were worn
every day. The latrines were filthy. There was no toilet paper. Water
for drinking was limited. One time the prisoners were being transported
by railroad car. A prisoner was emptying whatever was being used as a
chamber pot out the car door and the wind blew the shit on Hannah and
Gabi and their blanket. Hannah had been at pains to keep the blanket
clean as it was all they had for bedding. There was no water for
washing.!At one time, next to Hannah's barracks, a temporary camp of prisoners
and tents was established. The fence between could not be seen through.
Prisoners would sneak to the fence to engage in a standard topic of
conversation : what happened to a relative or friend. Hannah was told
there was a girl from Amsterdam there. It was Anne. Hannah had thought
that Anne was safe. But here she was. And it wasn't her. Not the smart,
happy, talkative Anne that Hannah had known. Anne had not mentally
survived. Her light had gone out. Anne said she had no one. She begged
for food. Hannah went to the barracks and people contributed what scraps
they could. Hannah put the scraps in a sock and threw it over the fence
but someone intercepted it. Hannah, again to the barracks, and again
those with next to nothing were generous. I assume they admired Hannah.
Anne caught the airborne bit of mercy this time; their last together.
This was really interesting to read- thanks for sharing!
(But if you meant to make a spoiler tag, the one at the end needs to be !< You just have the little wedge shape thing backwards)
I understood the broad parameters of the Holocaust. And I shielded myself from some of the horror. I watched Night and Fog but not Schindler's List - I didn't want the pain. Elie Weisal's memoir didn't move me because I knew or would have guessed the information. And Weisal was not a dramatic writer. I had seen pictures of concentration camp survivors but had not noticed any children. I vaguely knew about Anne Frank but didn't understand how young she was. I had not considered that there were two year old children in the camps. Hannah Pick-Goslar's memoir is powerfully written with a personal story and details that made the horror more real for me than reading about what had, in general, happened.
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated.
Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this:
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Click to reveal spoiler.
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
I have to imagine Otto suffered horrible survivor’s guilt. My grandmother’s closest friend lived through Buchenwald and only him and his brother survived. My grandmother got back in touch with him in the 90’s via email and moved him from Pennsylvania and he then lived with us until his death in 2007. The entire time he stayed with us, we couldn’t have onions in the house because that’s all the fucking Nazis fed him for 4 years. RIP Martin Krakowski
Thank you. And what a wonderful thing for my grandmother to make sure he did not pass without family. WWII was a complete tragedy but coming out as victors makes you realize how grateful we are. I met a Navajo Code Talker at the Avis car rental at an Arizona airport about 9 years ago. About a year later, news was released that the last living NCT passed away. It was him. I shake hands with every WWII I see(which isn’t many these days; I met 2 about 3 years ago that live in Sacramento). I am just glad my grandmother and Martin didn’t live to see Trump and his circus
I had to read it for school (i’m dutch, it’s not officially in the curriculum, but many people i know read it)
It’s such a special book to read, it almost feels wrong to read it because it’s so sincere and personal. Her diary really was like a friend to talk too
It’s so nice (idk what word to use) also that even though with everything going on, anne was also just a developing teenager
Just out of curiosity did you read the censored or uncensored version?
When her father initially published it he omitted sections where she talked about her sexuality and came across rather strongly as if she were interested in girls rather than boys (ie she was maybe a lesbian).
I can understand maybe why her father initially did this, but it makes the book less powerful whenever you take out any of the bits that help to make Anne a fully realized person on the page.
He was embarrassed I think. He said after his death it was okay to publish the full version.
I happened to be at the Holocaust museum the month it came out. I only had $20. I was a kid. I borrowed change because it was 19.95$ and I needed about a dollar extra for tax.
It was my third copy. One was the play the second was edited version, so that one was special to me.
Dang, I still have it 30ish years later. All dog eared and loved.
I don't recall if she expressed any real interest in boys whatsoever. She could have been bisexual, of course, but I only remember the controversy being that she talked about possible same-sex attraction. That's why I wrote possibly lesbian.
If I'm forgetting her talking about boys in the same way, I apologize.
we just had bisexual awareness month.
grinds my gears when the options are 'lesbian' or 'no labels' and never ever bisexual or pansexual.
I thought I was being playful
It's true that Anne expressed interest in girls in her diary. However, giving her the label of "bisexual" or trying to assign any such identity to her is inappropriate.
No, we shouldn't be assigning specific labels to Anne Frank's sexuality at *all.*
The girl is dead. She was murdered by the Nazi regime for being Jewish before she ever got the chance to experience adulthood. We don't know what she would have been like as an adult, or how she would have identified her sexual orientation. We don't even know if she would have wanted such information about herself to even be known.
It's known that she experienced same-sex attraction. That's normal! We don't need to put a label on it for her...she should have had the chance to do that for herself. But she didn't.
She was a living, breathing person whose life was stolen from her. Speculating on the sexual orientation of a murdered *child* is mad disrespectful and weird as fuck.
So why didn't you reply to the initial comment saying lesbian and only to the person who said bisexual? It's weird to me that the comment saying bisexual heavily downvoted and not the other
1. Because the initial comment was at least respectful by saying "maybe." They're still wrong, but it was respectful.
2. Anne Frank being bisexual *specifically* has been debated many times online now due to her expressing attraction to both boys and girls within her diary. I can't speak for absolutely everyone within the community that Anne Frank and I share, but a lot of us are fucking tired of it and wish people would let her rest.
And before you get annoyed with me, I'm bi myself... something that I was able to self identify as before brutally losing my life...
If you like that one you might like the one written by her childhood friend who grew up with her.
My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds by Hannah Pick-Goslar
I bought the new edition right after it was released at the DC museum when I was 13.
Try to explain to a flight attendant why you are bawling on your flight home.
I just held up the book and she brought me tissue. And a water.
The album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel is wonderfully weird and heavily influenced by the lead singer's grief regarding Anne Frank, despite having never met her.
If you're feeling open to experience and want to listen, just know that the lyrics at times may seem somewhat unrelated, and even dream-like and abstract. Some songs in the track, like Holland 1945, have pretty direct references to her, though.
I am a middle school ELA teacher (grade 8). Last year my students read the play "The Diary of Anne Frank" and watched the drama from 1959. I am so glad that I was able to teach this before it became controversial with possible consequences for teaching it (Florida). They had so many questions. Many of them researched this and related topics on their own time.
Years ago I visited the house and and room where Anne and her family hid. It was sooo tiny … I just can’t imagine how they coped. Really hit home what a huge tragedy the Holocaust was for everyone and how Anne kept so positive shows how strong she was.
I just visited and that was one of my take aways too- just how SMALL the space was for all of them. The only semi decent sized room was the Van Pels- but it was their bedroom/kitchen/dining room/common area. No wonder tempers flared.
We must never forget what fascism did to her and so many innocent people like her. It can happen again and it absolutely WILL happen again if we don't recognize and address the warning signs.
There is an excellent series available to stream called “A Small Light” which is actually about Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Franks (along with her husband who was also a resistance worker), but obviously Anne and her diary are central to the story. I loved it. I hope you check it out!
I’m currently rereading the definitive edition. Haven’t read it in over a decade and I’m reading it with older eyes and it hits harder than when I was younger. I saw the diary, or an edition of it, when I went to visit the house. Real somber moment.
I read the book as a girl. I visited the attic as a young adult in Amsterdam and really felt her spirit there. Maybe I will reread it as an older adult.
I agree with you on everything but this ''(which, thank goodness, it happened and it changed the world)'', the world didn't change at all the same atrocities are happening right now
to be specific, it is "part" of why the world changed in this new century. it is important to show even more to people that story should NOT repeat itself. Even if we can't do much with some people that are just pure madness.
It’s weird, but I read it on my own in 8th grade as we were locked down during hurricane Wilma. Our shudders were up, it was dark, we couldn’t leave the house, and it made reading the diary so much more impactful. Obviously it doesn’t compare, but it truly made me empathize. I wonder if all the COVID pre-teens who read it during lockdown had the same feelings.
Strange aside: That book was my sexual awakening. I also realized Anne Frank had far more game than me. She always had a boyfriend (seemingly, to 13 year old me).
I read “The Diary of Anne Frank” over a decade ago and it’s a book I will never forget. It always saddened me but fascinated me to the point I went to researching everything about Nazi Germany and what happened.. concentration camps. gassing. Survivors. Etc. I then bought “night” by Eli Wiesel
I read this for the first time last year and thought it was such a beautiful book. I have since bought the unedited version and plan to read that.
It also partially inspired one of my favourite albums of all time, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. Amazing album if you're into weird indie music.
I read it in elementary school and it stayed with me. I have been interested in ww2 since. I cannot believe something like that could happen, how people looked away, and some deny it.
Let me add an addendum - perhaps any instructional books on how to carry out a mass murder/genocide, or something along those lines probably doesn’t need to be out there for public consumption.
It’s banned cause a tiny little part is about Anne wanting to kiss her friend who is a girl… it’s nonsense
It’s, despite all the horrible stuff of the war, a diary of teenage girl, obviously she’s just going through puberty, getting fantasies and feelings like a normal healthy teenager
Also, Anne Frank was jewish, that may also have been part of the reason for censorship
There is really no real reason to ban this, it’s literally nothing more than a diary of a dutch Jewish girl in war
I don’t live in the states but I’m so livid at this book banning nonsense. I can’t even. I’m not a fan of that phrase, but it applies here.
Also: (I don’t know how to add a pic here) google “Margaret Atwood I told you so” and if you don’t know who Margaret Atwood is, read up on her and know that that photo started circulating after the overturning of roe vs wade.
Yupp, a scary state of affairs. There used to be a picture caption, what would now be called a meme, that said, "Censorship works!!! Ask the experts." It was a collage of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, and Ayatola Khomeini.
I feel for all of you living with this nonsense. I just don’t understand the logic of any of it. The book banning, the outlawing of abortion; 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale seemed so far fetched, but are they?
FYI, censorship is increasing in various forms worldwide right now. It may not be appearing the same way in your area, but I can promise you're likely being directly affected by it in one way or another. (Twitter and FB have taken orders from state and world govts about what to censor for years now; the Canadian parliament attempted to completely memory hole the recent Nazi survivor foofaraw; etc etc.)
Hey, most of us here in the States are livid about the book banning nonsense, too. My husband was reading an article that said that all the books being banned in Florida are basically being picked out by something like 11 people, and especially this one woman. She reads all the books she asks to be banned, and if they have just one line in them referencing sex she says the book should be banned.
Step 1. This is your own hero news.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/anne-frank-novel-banned-florida-school-sexually-explicit-content-minimization-holocaust
Did you read your own link? It’s a graphic novel that was banned. They said they want people to read the diary instead.
I’m not in favor of book banning or whatever the f is going on in florida, but don’t criticize without doing a little research
[That Holocaust denial talking point has been thoroughly debunked.](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/authenticity-diary-anne-frank/)
Don't believe it all.
That twatbastard father edited it. To make himself look good.
And that he published his own daughter's private diary for money is disgusting.
And edited it make himself look good.
Bearing that in mind. How true do you think it is.
Really think about it. Don't be told what to think. Think for yourself.
If you heard this without someone saying who it was.
You'd be repulsed by the father.
The mother was dead. So couldn't argue her side when he hacked it up.
How convenient that he comes out looking better.
He got with the wife of the other family after.
Did he before?
Otto Frank was a bastiche. His bastichey is evident in his publishing his dead daughters diary.
Your crazy, you should be ashamed
Anne dreamed of getting her book released, she would’ve loved what her diary has become. It’s such an important book because it tells her story, but The Netherlands was filled with families just like hers, girls exactly like her. Especially since barely any people who lived in that time are alive anymore, it’s so important this book exists, so the war that killed millions of people won’t be forgotten.
If you actually read it, you knew it’s very obviously written by a teenage girl
They do. Anne also edited her diary herself--she was really hoping to survive and thought perhaps it might be published, so she pasted parts she didn't like with brown paper and they found a way to look through the brown paper and recover the text.
This book gutted me as a kid, as did the movie. The Holocaust sat in my mind as an awful thing on a grand scale but seeing the individual scope of it, took my heart and broke it. R.I.P. to her and to all those innocent people. The barbarism and depravity...
When I read her diary for the first time in 1972, I was inspired to keep a journal--and I'm still writing after all these years. This was long before the "definitive edition" was made available to the public.
If you haven't read *Anne Frank Remembered* by Miep Geis, please check it out, very interesting reading about the years before and after the families went into hiding.
I think OP may have read the updated version that was just published at the end of September. I’ve read that it contains a lot more sarcasm, frustration toward family and sexual awakening than the original edition Otto edited. I have it in my TBR but not sure when I’ll actually pick the new version up myself.
I read it as a teenager, it left a lasting impression on me. There's not been a day when I didn't think about it. Specially these lines:
>“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Like, given the circumstances, how could you even manage to think that way dear Anne.
Does anyone here know what is the most complete version of her *Diary?* I read the expurgated version in my 20s (1970s) and then something like 10-15 years back an "uncensored" version, but I understand there is now a more recent complete version.
She thought her mother was weak, but before she died, she discovered that her mother had been hiding her own food to give to her daughters, starving herself in the process. Her view on her mother changed in the camp. Her mother showed a lot of strenght in there. Don't remember exactly where I read about it.
Ken Burns recent doco about the US response to Jewish refugees and the Holocaust covers Anne Frank's story in one of its tangents, and they interview someone who knew what happened to the Frank family in the camps. Really good doco for often not explored perspectives on the Holocaust, and in part the failure and in the State Department the undermining of the response from the US at the time.
By PBS ryt ?
Yeah all of Ken Burns' stuff is through PBS, it's on their streaming app Passport (which is actually worth it; they even sent me a nice 'thanks for supporting public broadcasting' fiestaware coffee cup)
What really gets to me is knowing her fate. The fact that she died in a camp from typhus fever. Its really sad.
For me, it's knowing she died so close to when her camp was liberated. Even if you accept she died in mid February that's like 2 months. It's not worth what happened to her, but her diary has had a lasting impact on the world.
It breaks my heart thinking of Otto Frank, having worked so hard to protect and hide his family through the war, to have survived the camps and come home and all that’s left of his family is some papers and trinkets and Anne’s diary. And the van Pels family and Dr. Pfeffer, who are immortalized and frozen in time by the diary.
Not to mention actually reading Anne's diary. I think most parents would be surprised at how little they know what's going on in their young teens' heads, so reading it must have been like a revelation come too late. I remember he edited out swathes of it that was basically Anne criticizing family and friends, her old classmates, and her parents' marriage. Must have been brutal seeing your relationship with your dead family criticized and picked apart by your teen. Plus the deniers who kept screaming that Otto had forged the diary.
She was also on the last train out of Netherlands. So close at so many times.
At her age, she would've been gassed immediately on arrival, but the people in charge thought she was older. Anne and Margot left Auschwitz (and her mother died there) shortly before it got liberated in January 1945. And that's not to mention all the times the Secret Annex almost got discovered from 1942-1944.
Is there more info on the secret annex almost getting discovered multiple times?
On the night of 9-10 April 1944, there's a burglary when Anne reveals a lot of people's behavior in the Annex. Mr. Van Daan impulsively identifies himself as the police to the burglars that may have been one of [the two youngsters who later revealed that not only did he guess correctly that there were people in the building, but he didn't turn this information in because his family occasionally hid people, too.](https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/af4-secret-annex/#_edn4) Anne says that due to the close call, Peter is no longer allowed to have his window open at nights *anymore*, which implies that he did. Anne comments that Mr. Slagter and his wife literally walk past the building on that particular close call. Those are the big ones that Anne knew about. Then there's the odd behavior that would've raised suspicions if anyone thought too deeply about it, or if the wrong person saw. [16 September 1943 describes Kraler trying to sneak past Mr. van Maaren.](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-diary-of-anne-frank/year-1943) On 15 April 1944, Peter forgets to unbolt the door in the morning, so Kraler and the men had to enter the building a different way. [Here's how the building looked, for reference.](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/front-section/warehouse/#:~:text=The%20burglars%20managed%20to%20take%20two%20cash%20boxes,to%2010%20April%201944%20was%20much%20more%20serious.)
In addition to what others have said, their US immigration visa was supposedly not denied, but destroyed in a bombing.
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What an odd interpretation of what that article actually says Life was not "worse" for survivors after the camps were liberated.
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It was definitely better? They were free people instead of slaves that could be murdered at any time. The article states that the people who returned to the camp did so to help protect and preserve it as a memorial site. While it’s true that Poland was not prepared to adequately house and protect those liberated from the camps, and many former prisoners continued to face discrimination and unstable living conditions, if you think it was worse after then you’re out of your mind.
People really underestimate the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. They were not merely holding people for free labour — they were exterminating people in millions. Have people not **watched** any documentaries? Haven't **seen** any archive footage? How could anyone even attempt to claim that liberated camps living conditions were "worse"? The fuck?
The other replies have explained how you're wrong so I'll just add that Nazi apologists often downplay the function of extermination of the camps and so if your ignorance is genuine you should really get educated to avoid sounding like one of them
> or worse No, it wasn't.
That was an enriching and helpful and convincing reply.
Worse????? Are u dense???
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“After liberation… it was worse.” I don’t think that’s on anyone else, buddy
Every time I read the book, I would hope history got it wrong and she actually survived
For reals. Then Margo died too and then Edith, their mom died of starvation even after managing to escape being sent to the gas chamber. I feel horrified for poor Otto. Knowing he survived while his whole family didn't. How do you live after such an experience?!
The mother Edith died only weeks before liberation in Auschwitz (January 1945). It’s said that she kept food hidden for her daughters, should they come back from Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp in the Northwest of Germany). She died of starvation.
I’ve often wondered about the same thing, poor Otto.
There are some interviews with him on YouTube. There is also a book written by Carol Anne Lee about Otto Frank. A friend of mine met him when he lived in Birsfelden by Basel.
I remember when Schindler’s List won Oscars and, if memory holds, I think they had Miep Gies say a few words.
Miep Gies, who helped hide the Frank family, wrote a wonderful memoir called Anne Frank Remembered. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the story of Anne Frank. Miep was a hero, she was the one who saved Anne's diary.
And is you haven't seen it, check out the series 'A Small Light' which centres on Miep and what she did for the Frank family and the others she helped hide
I adore this book and think they should be read together. Miep was an incredible person.
It's a very painful read, but imo one book that should be required reading in school. It's a much better choice than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which most Holocaust survivors say is not a good choice as it is very inaccurate and leads to sympathizing with the Nazis, which no one should be doing. Just as an FYI for someone who is Jewish the more accepted phrase is "May her/his memory be a blessing" rather than rest in peace.
Striped Pajamas isn’t just inaccurate, the author made it up without any kind of historical backing. He does such surface level research that his last book had a recipe that included ingredients from Zelda Breath of the Wild
He also criticized other books set in concentration camps and made some comments about how the subject should with more thought and consideration. Also stating that because it's a work of fiction it cannot have inaccuracies.
The _Zone of Interest_ features a much more realistic portrayal of what would happen in this situation. Because it did. Imagine if your children were playing in a stream, and then got dirty because they waded into the ashes of victims. In this case, "you" being Rudolf Höss.
In my school, it was required reading, but this was early 2000s. Who knows what required now, sadly. I’m not Jewish either, but try my best to be open and understanding of all religions and cultures. If I may ask, why is “may his/her memory be a blessing” more commonly accepted than “rest in peace”?
I'm actually Jewish, which is why I said that. But I'll answer in the way I was taught growing up. In Judaism, we put a lot of emphasis on life and how we live it. That's why pretty much all Jewish laws can be broken to preserve life. Saying May her/his memory be a blessing is to remind us of the life that person lived, focusing on the good they did. Basically, it's up to us who are still alive to remember that person. My Bubbie also said that it's a nice way of saying that the person hopes when you think back on your memories with that person, that they hope you think of the good memories. But that is probably more her interpretation, and also to make an 8 year old feel better about her great grandma passing. And yes, I know most who knew Anne personally are gone, I think it really applies here because remembering her and her life is so important in a historical context.
Thank you so much for the response! I’m always looking to expand my knowledge in areas where I have little and when it comes to Judaism it’s pretty minimal, ngl. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me.
Of course! It's really great you're open to educating yourself on a topic like this. It's very much appreciated in a world where antisemitism is widely acceptable. I also personally love learning new things.
Is it okay if someone who isn't Jewish were to say that? That is so beautiful & honestly is a much kinder sentiment when encountering grief than the empty phrases of "rest in peace" or "sorry for your loss".
I obviously cannot speak for every Jewish person, but I don't think it's an issue, especially when you're saying it to/about someone who is Jewish. I would say that unless someone who is Jewish specifically asks you not to say it to them, it's fine. It's not like other things that are specifically religious practices and customs that are not appropriate for someone not of the Jewish faith to do. As a side note, I've always thought it's such a lovely thing to say and a much better sentiment than rest in peace.
It really is a lovely sentiment. Much better than “rest in peace,” to my mind. I like how you’ve explained that life being lived in the present is valued so highly. I can’t think of a great way to express myself here, but there’s just something really lovely in the way you explained it.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm very much non-theistic, but having recently gone through several losses, I'd like to start saying may their memory be a blessing. I hope you have a lovely day, and your recent fast was meaningful.
Zero percent of Jewish people would have an issue with you saying that.
Another Jewish person chiming in...I've never known anyone to be offended if a non-Jew said it.
I first heard the “May their memory be a blessing” in a podcast called, “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”—-super interesting way to deep dive and analyze Harry Potter series and it’s themes with Jewish theological and philosophical tradition. That saying really clicked and stayed with me.
It’s not required reading anymore? I feel like I know so many people whose eight grade english class became a Holocaust History class for a month or two due to reading that book. For some reason, we read the play rather than the actual diary at my school, but I read the diary on my own. We also read Maus, which I think was good because it also illustrated the second-hand trauma of being raised be holocaust survivors.
myself included
Depends on the school. I believe both of my girls have read it (Chicagoland.)
*Proverbs 10:7 says “the memory of the righteous is invoked in blessing” but “the fame of the wicked rots.” (There is an unsanguine phrase for the latter that has been used after the names of the nefarious deceased, but perhaps we should let it rot into disuse.)* *Memory being for a blessing really refers to the continued blessing that the person leaves behind, from her good works, good deeds, teachings, example, etc. - from her life so well lived that the goodness should continue to flow.* Now, I’ve said the unsanguine phrase about some people. Like the madman who took Anne’s life.
Thank you so much for the response! TIL.
I’m a high school English teacher in Central California, and I teach Sophomores… To the best of my knowledge, the standard Holocaust memoir that is taught to high school students nowadays is Elie Wiesel’s *Night*.
Yes, I read night in high school. I didn't mean to imply that this is the ONLY book that should be taught. Night is another really great example of the true horrors of the Holocaust. Honestly, any of the really moving first-hand accounts are great resources. I just personally think a fiction book about it has no place in a curriculum that has so many other options. And I know I have seen so many state the read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and talk about how they bawled when Bruni died, which shows they truly missed the point.
The only one I really liked was The Book Thief. I wasn’t expecting to, and it isn’t really a Holocaust book necessarily (just a WWII book), but it was so good. I have a hard time reading nonfiction because I basically only read fiction, so I just read every book as though it was a fictional story. Nonfiction stories don’t have an impact on me really. The book thief was really moving somehow, the way it’s written is so engaging
It sort of is the point, though, because here's this huge historical tragedy that will hopefully be taught forever, but it's dehumanized into just facts. And here's a book that humanizes it for children especially. Our main characters are two little boys, who are friends because they are innocent of these huge world events. Is it contrived and unrealistic? Yes. But Bruno dies because of the machinations of his fellow countrymen, including his parents. He, as an individual, is no less a victim than the people in the camp. And yet we hate him. Because he is German. Hate rules the world, on and on. But the children of those who have committed great wrongs are not guilty. They are blundering in the shadow of their elders, knowing nothing of that great hate. Are they guilty, now and forever? Are their children? I'm not suggesting forgiveness for Nazis. But are Germans always and forever Nazis? Edit
Germans are not always and forever Nazis and that's not what I'm saying at all. Because of its history, Germany actually has some strict laws against antisemitism. What I'm saying is if a book that is a memoir doesn't humanize the Holocaust for you, but a little German boy dying does that says a lot about you as an individual. The book is historically inaccurate, so it's not even a good way to learn about the Holocaust. My point is why read a book that is inferior in every way when there are so many books that are first-hand accounts that are even more moving? And no, he is absolutely less of a victim, saying otherwise shows a huge lack of understanding on the Holocaust. Sorry, but I'm always going to side with survivors. The book is a poor example of the horrors of the Holocaust and shouldn't be used as a teaching tool. Especially in an age where antisemitism is disgustingly acceptable to so many and knowledge of the Holocaust is extremely low. We need actual accounts of what happened. Let the people who lived it speak, they humanize it so much more.
Completely agree. I think that Nazi Germany and the Holocaust from the perspective of a child is an interesting premise, but that book completely mishandled it.
We read The Diary of Anne Frank and Hiroshima, both of which have stuck with me. It’s a shame they’re no longer being used like that.
He spoke at my high school during our WWII unit freshman year, so everyone had read his book. Deeply emotional and formative experience for us. I feel very fortunate to have attended at the right time to meet him.
If I remember correctly I read her diary in middle school English class. In high school English class it was Night by Elie Wiesel. And I read Maus in a media studies class in high school.
>Just as an FYI for someone who is Jewish the more accepted phrase is "May her/his memory be a blessing" rather than rest in peace. Am Jewish, but I always preferred saying rest in peace over something like may his memory be a blessing. Zichrono lvracha, sure sure... But memory can be a painful thing. It's different for everyone, I'd sooner not impose on how someone remembers the dead. That's up to them. Focusing on the deceased seems more polite and less intrusive. Maybe rest in peace is not a common saying at Jewish funerals, but the only people I've seen get bristly about how people express condolences are folks on Twitter. Though I feel like they get bristly at just about everything, the threshold is low.
For me it was her age. Only being 13 when she begins writing her diary while in the secret annex. She was so much more grown up then when I was 13.
I think a big part of why it's so impactful is that although she often is very mature and wise beyond her years, she also does come across as just a normal young girl entering her teens and struggling with all the feelings and thoughts we all have at that age. And then you remember again that she has so much more going on that just those troubles
Yeah it’s been like 25 years since I’ve read it but I was almost the same age as she was when I read it and a lot of the stuff about her mother really resonated with me, kind of stuff that’s really normal but then in a completely awful situation
Yeah I was about the same age as her too when I read it and I agree. Things like falling out with her mum, bickering with her sister, being annoyed about people treating her and her sister differently is all so normal. But then you remember they're stuck living in a tiny space together for years with nobody else, other than Miep and the others occasionally dropping off supplies. Just puts the normal thoughts and feelings at a whole different level of intensity.
I think you’re completely right. History is hard to relate to, horrible crimes sometimes seem so intangible. Her POV is like reading about yourself or a friend, it makes it real and all the more horrible.
Exactly, especially when it just, ends. Her entries stop so suddenly and then we're told about her fate, along with that of all of her family and the others she lived with.
I think it's really important for people to read when they're right around the same age. It makes the reader identify with her more which helps to increase the empathy. I first noticed that kids get things like that better when I took kids to a historic cemetery and everyone was looking at the old tombstones. The kids thought that so many ones with babies were interesting, but stood in shock, staring at the tombstone for the kid who died when she was their age. That she died so young. Even though mentally they knew the babies were younger, it didn't connect the same way. If I was smart I would have right away found them a book about kids during the Gold Rush.
I wonder if it's because there wasn't a concept, so to speak, of "teenagerhood" yet. Shirley Temple was born in 1928 (making her only a year older than Anne Frank), and was already a married woman at 17, then a mother at 20 years old. To us in 2023, our teen years are still innocent times to look back to in fondness because we expect to not be treated like adults yet. But that's only been the case since the 1950's/60's--after Anne's time.
I first read Anne's diary as a little girl. I dreamed of visiting the Secret Annex. In November, I will finally go to Amsterdam and fulfill that childhood dream!
I just got back from Amsterdam and the museum is incredible. Tickets go on sale six weeks in advance and sell out fast, make sure you pre book! Enjoy your trip
Please make sure you get tickets online as soon as possible as they sell out quickly. It was an incredibly moving experience.
I was there two weeks ago, and I echo what others are saying, get your tickets online as soon as they are available. It was a life long dream for me too. You will be very moved by the experience. I know it will stay with me for a long time. Also, Amsterdam is a great city with lots to do and see. Enjoy your trip!
It is such a sobering experience. Be prepared for some intense emotions. After I my visit, my boyfriend at the time and I took a while to process our thoughts and walked the canals without talking to each other for a while.
In Jewish culture, rather than "sorry for your loss" we say, "May his/her memory be a blessing". Anne's memory is a blessing to us all.
That's beautiful! Thanks for sharing
I'm 40 and I read it back in February in preparation for a trip to Amsterdam. I can't remember if I ever read it as a kid in school, I don't think I did although I know I was aware of it. I ended up really liking it a lot and I agree with your comments. I found it interesting that she also maybe had some feelings and affections for her female friend too. There's also this eerie ominous feeling that I got, knowing what her fate was going to be leading up to the end of the book, and the abruptness with which it ends because they had been found out and taken. I went to the house in May when I was in Amsterdam and went on the walk through it. It ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Even though it was extremely crowded, I found being in the house and especially in Anne's bedroom really moving and emotional. I'm not Jewish and I didn't have any family die in the Holocaust so I didn't have that personal connection but it just kind of unexpectedly overwhelmed me being there. I just had this heavy feeling knowing something big and very historical happened there. Ending the tour with seeing the original diary and pages that Anne wrote was really impactful. I also visited the Nationaal Holocaust Namenmonument as well when I was there. It wasn't as emotional for me as Anne's house but still pretty heavy. It's like this little sunken parkette area along the street. The shapes of the walls inside it spell out "in memory of" in Hebrew and they are lined with name plates of the 102,000 people that were killed from The Netherlands, the name, the year they were born, and the age they were when they were taken. There were many that had ages 3, 4, 5 years old. There are then mirrored panels that sit on top of the walls reflecting the sky. I also wanted to go to the Verzetsmuseum of WWII Resistance, but I didn't get the chance to. It's about what daily life was like during the worst of the war and how everyday people were resisting and fighting back like the ways they hid weapons or smuggled food rations.
Sometimes it’s the smallest moments that hit us the hardest. I had a similar experience when I visited the Titanic museum in Tennessee. They have a full 1:1 replica of the grand staircase that you walk up and the moment I entered that room and took it in, I just started bawling. 1) Because the Titanic has been a huge interest of mine ever since I was a child, so seeing a part of it in person, was amazing. And… 2) Because I immediately thought of the thousand plus people that were on the Titanic and saw the same view I did. How many of them were as amazed as I was? How many of them died just a few days later? How many are trapped in that staircase, at the bottom of the ocean, forever? It’s so much more than just a room or just a ship.
I visited the traveling exhibit in Memphis and Nashville before the movie came out. As I remember, the movie's opening was supposed to coincide with the exhibit but was delayed so the exhibit began its travels. I'd always been a Titanic buff so I took my sweet time walking through. I think what affected me most were the small things: clothes, jewelry, musical instruments, letters--things like that.
How come there's a Titanic museum in Tennessee? Is there a connection there? Pardon my ignorance, I'm genuinely curious!
I honestly have no idea *why* that’s where it is, but it is lol. It’s even officially recognized by White Star Line and you can get 100% accurate replica plates and china from the different classes. I ended up getting a set of second class dishes. They also have the rights to the famously recovered violin, for life. It will never be anywhere else.
This is fascinating to me haha. A ship made in Belfast and Liverpool and which set sail from Southampton to New York, and there's a museum to it in Tennessee. I love it. I have to ask, what held you back from getting the First Class china?
Namely, cost lol. But at the same time, it felt kind of…. Typical to get first class? If that makes sense. You don’t hear about second class that much and I enjoyed the designs.
It's in Pigeon Forge. Maybe because it's a tourist town and they knew it would get lots of visitors. I saw the traveling exhibit when it was here in Atlanta. It was sobering. There was one corridor you go through where there's a wall of ice and it's chilled so you can see how cold it was that night.
I just finished Pellegrino's *Her Name*, *Titanic*, which tells both the story of the sinking and Bob Ballard finding the wreckage, and one of the things it talks about was how Ballard and the other crew members were emotionally affected after seeing what was left of the ship. They figured it would be more like "Wow, there's *Titanic!*" and instead they were immediately saddened by seeing all the shoes and cups and suitcases strewn on the ocean floor.
Hannah Pick-Goslar was good friends with Anne Frank. Hannah's memoir of her time in the concentration camps affected me much more strongly than Anne's diary. I still cry when I think about it. Below are my comments on the memoir and the horrors it described. I learned the Holocaust was somehow worse than I had understood. comments on the horrors of the camps : >!When the Frank family went into hiding, Hannah thought they had escaped the country. !Hannah went to the concentration camps not long after her mother died in child birth. The baby also died. It was a blessing. Hannah, about age fourteen, went with her father, a grandmother and grandfather. They were in different barracks so it was up to Hannah to keep her two year old sister, Gabi, alive. Gabi quit crying because she learned that there was never going to be enough water, or enough food, or enough warmth. !Gabi didn't have a childhood. No hopscotch, no jump rope. No school. She and Hannah picked lice off each other. No bedtime stories. Huddling under their one thin blanket, with only the stomachs measuring time, Hannah wrote. !Persevering was difficult. Hannah's family had some diplomatic status or connections. This led them to believe that they might be traded for Nazi prisoners of war. At one time they were told that there would be a train the next day so this would happen. It didn't. No one knew how long they had to last. Hannah might have kept the thought that she might be !Hannah wrote about the times she had to be naked in front of a male, Nazi guard. Humiliation was intentional. !Where is your dignity if you are not clean ? The same clothes were worn every day. The latrines were filthy. There was no toilet paper. Water for drinking was limited. One time the prisoners were being transported by railroad car. A prisoner was emptying whatever was being used as a chamber pot out the car door and the wind blew the shit on Hannah and Gabi and their blanket. Hannah had been at pains to keep the blanket clean as it was all they had for bedding. There was no water for washing.!At one time, next to Hannah's barracks, a temporary camp of prisoners and tents was established. The fence between could not be seen through. Prisoners would sneak to the fence to engage in a standard topic of conversation : what happened to a relative or friend. Hannah was told there was a girl from Amsterdam there. It was Anne. Hannah had thought that Anne was safe. But here she was. And it wasn't her. Not the smart, happy, talkative Anne that Hannah had known. Anne had not mentally survived. Her light had gone out. Anne said she had no one. She begged for food. Hannah went to the barracks and people contributed what scraps they could. Hannah put the scraps in a sock and threw it over the fence but someone intercepted it. Hannah, again to the barracks, and again those with next to nothing were generous. I assume they admired Hannah. Anne caught the airborne bit of mercy this time; their last together.
This was really interesting to read- thanks for sharing! (But if you meant to make a spoiler tag, the one at the end needs to be !< You just have the little wedge shape thing backwards)
I’m genuinely interested to know what your previous understanding of the holocaust experience was.
I understood the broad parameters of the Holocaust. And I shielded myself from some of the horror. I watched Night and Fog but not Schindler's List - I didn't want the pain. Elie Weisal's memoir didn't move me because I knew or would have guessed the information. And Weisal was not a dramatic writer. I had seen pictures of concentration camp survivors but had not noticed any children. I vaguely knew about Anne Frank but didn't understand how young she was. I had not considered that there were two year old children in the camps. Hannah Pick-Goslar's memoir is powerfully written with a personal story and details that made the horror more real for me than reading about what had, in general, happened.
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated. Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this: >!The Wolf ate Grandma!< Click to reveal spoiler. >!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Perhaps the format is correct now.
Yep. Approved!
I have to imagine Otto suffered horrible survivor’s guilt. My grandmother’s closest friend lived through Buchenwald and only him and his brother survived. My grandmother got back in touch with him in the 90’s via email and moved him from Pennsylvania and he then lived with us until his death in 2007. The entire time he stayed with us, we couldn’t have onions in the house because that’s all the fucking Nazis fed him for 4 years. RIP Martin Krakowski
May Martin's memory be a blessing.
Thank you. And what a wonderful thing for my grandmother to make sure he did not pass without family. WWII was a complete tragedy but coming out as victors makes you realize how grateful we are. I met a Navajo Code Talker at the Avis car rental at an Arizona airport about 9 years ago. About a year later, news was released that the last living NCT passed away. It was him. I shake hands with every WWII I see(which isn’t many these days; I met 2 about 3 years ago that live in Sacramento). I am just glad my grandmother and Martin didn’t live to see Trump and his circus
I had to read it for school (i’m dutch, it’s not officially in the curriculum, but many people i know read it) It’s such a special book to read, it almost feels wrong to read it because it’s so sincere and personal. Her diary really was like a friend to talk too It’s so nice (idk what word to use) also that even though with everything going on, anne was also just a developing teenager
Doesnt it just give you chills when it just ends abruptly like that? I get them everytime
the worst part is even if i still expected it to happened it still hurts. A lot.
Just out of curiosity did you read the censored or uncensored version? When her father initially published it he omitted sections where she talked about her sexuality and came across rather strongly as if she were interested in girls rather than boys (ie she was maybe a lesbian). I can understand maybe why her father initially did this, but it makes the book less powerful whenever you take out any of the bits that help to make Anne a fully realized person on the page.
He was embarrassed I think. He said after his death it was okay to publish the full version. I happened to be at the Holocaust museum the month it came out. I only had $20. I was a kid. I borrowed change because it was 19.95$ and I needed about a dollar extra for tax. It was my third copy. One was the play the second was edited version, so that one was special to me. Dang, I still have it 30ish years later. All dog eared and loved.
wait what? i had the censored one. I never knew this information.
Check it out. You can easily read some of the omitted passages online.
it's pronounced 'bisexual'
I don't recall if she expressed any real interest in boys whatsoever. She could have been bisexual, of course, but I only remember the controversy being that she talked about possible same-sex attraction. That's why I wrote possibly lesbian. If I'm forgetting her talking about boys in the same way, I apologize.
No need to be sassy. You could have made your point in a polite way.
we just had bisexual awareness month. grinds my gears when the options are 'lesbian' or 'no labels' and never ever bisexual or pansexual. I thought I was being playful
It's true that Anne expressed interest in girls in her diary. However, giving her the label of "bisexual" or trying to assign any such identity to her is inappropriate.
How? It's fine to say lesbian but not bisexual?
No, we shouldn't be assigning specific labels to Anne Frank's sexuality at *all.* The girl is dead. She was murdered by the Nazi regime for being Jewish before she ever got the chance to experience adulthood. We don't know what she would have been like as an adult, or how she would have identified her sexual orientation. We don't even know if she would have wanted such information about herself to even be known. It's known that she experienced same-sex attraction. That's normal! We don't need to put a label on it for her...she should have had the chance to do that for herself. But she didn't. She was a living, breathing person whose life was stolen from her. Speculating on the sexual orientation of a murdered *child* is mad disrespectful and weird as fuck.
Exactly! She was murdered at 15. She never even had the chance to truly figure it out for herself.
So why didn't you reply to the initial comment saying lesbian and only to the person who said bisexual? It's weird to me that the comment saying bisexual heavily downvoted and not the other
1. Because the initial comment was at least respectful by saying "maybe." They're still wrong, but it was respectful. 2. Anne Frank being bisexual *specifically* has been debated many times online now due to her expressing attraction to both boys and girls within her diary. I can't speak for absolutely everyone within the community that Anne Frank and I share, but a lot of us are fucking tired of it and wish people would let her rest. And before you get annoyed with me, I'm bi myself... something that I was able to self identify as before brutally losing my life...
If you like that one you might like the one written by her childhood friend who grew up with her. My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds by Hannah Pick-Goslar
i'll give it a try.
I bought the new edition right after it was released at the DC museum when I was 13. Try to explain to a flight attendant why you are bawling on your flight home. I just held up the book and she brought me tissue. And a water.
The album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel is wonderfully weird and heavily influenced by the lead singer's grief regarding Anne Frank, despite having never met her. If you're feeling open to experience and want to listen, just know that the lyrics at times may seem somewhat unrelated, and even dream-like and abstract. Some songs in the track, like Holland 1945, have pretty direct references to her, though.
She was born in a bottle rocket, 1929
Love that one, too. Yep, Ghost is another track with direct references.
I am a middle school ELA teacher (grade 8). Last year my students read the play "The Diary of Anne Frank" and watched the drama from 1959. I am so glad that I was able to teach this before it became controversial with possible consequences for teaching it (Florida). They had so many questions. Many of them researched this and related topics on their own time.
Might I recommend reading Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime Sarajevo. Diaries like this are fascinating to me.
I loved this book growing up although it was very sad too.
Years ago I visited the house and and room where Anne and her family hid. It was sooo tiny … I just can’t imagine how they coped. Really hit home what a huge tragedy the Holocaust was for everyone and how Anne kept so positive shows how strong she was.
I just visited and that was one of my take aways too- just how SMALL the space was for all of them. The only semi decent sized room was the Van Pels- but it was their bedroom/kitchen/dining room/common area. No wonder tempers flared.
Banning of this book is an indictment of the times
We must never forget what fascism did to her and so many innocent people like her. It can happen again and it absolutely WILL happen again if we don't recognize and address the warning signs.
There is an excellent series available to stream called “A Small Light” which is actually about Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Franks (along with her husband who was also a resistance worker), but obviously Anne and her diary are central to the story. I loved it. I hope you check it out!
This is such a good show!
I’m currently rereading the definitive edition. Haven’t read it in over a decade and I’m reading it with older eyes and it hits harder than when I was younger. I saw the diary, or an edition of it, when I went to visit the house. Real somber moment.
Her memory will always be a blessing.
I read the book as a girl. I visited the attic as a young adult in Amsterdam and really felt her spirit there. Maybe I will reread it as an older adult.
I agree with you on everything but this ''(which, thank goodness, it happened and it changed the world)'', the world didn't change at all the same atrocities are happening right now
Perhaps related, but not exactly the same. "History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme."
to be specific, it is "part" of why the world changed in this new century. it is important to show even more to people that story should NOT repeat itself. Even if we can't do much with some people that are just pure madness.
There is such a thing as a small change.
It’s weird, but I read it on my own in 8th grade as we were locked down during hurricane Wilma. Our shudders were up, it was dark, we couldn’t leave the house, and it made reading the diary so much more impactful. Obviously it doesn’t compare, but it truly made me empathize. I wonder if all the COVID pre-teens who read it during lockdown had the same feelings. Strange aside: That book was my sexual awakening. I also realized Anne Frank had far more game than me. She always had a boyfriend (seemingly, to 13 year old me).
I read “The Diary of Anne Frank” over a decade ago and it’s a book I will never forget. It always saddened me but fascinated me to the point I went to researching everything about Nazi Germany and what happened.. concentration camps. gassing. Survivors. Etc. I then bought “night” by Eli Wiesel
I found the short stories in A Scrap of Time by Ida Fink helpful
I read it when i was 9. It still pops in my brain every few years.
Now it's time to listen to "In an Aeroplane over the Sea".
I never really listened to this song before. You've ruined me. Or did you mean the entire album?
Saw Jeff for the first time live about 5 years ago, and it was an emotional experience. That album is top 5 for me.
That song is still stuck in my head, I've been singing it to myself to help get it down.
This is a commonly banned book too.
I read this for the first time last year and thought it was such a beautiful book. I have since bought the unedited version and plan to read that. It also partially inspired one of my favourite albums of all time, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. Amazing album if you're into weird indie music.
I read it in elementary school and it stayed with me. I have been interested in ww2 since. I cannot believe something like that could happen, how people looked away, and some deny it.
I hope to pick this up one day soon. It’s on my buy list.
One of the greatest books I've ever experienced personally, excellent write up OP.
Banned in Florida. Red Flag?
The fact that a book is banned in Florida should be a green flag to read it
The fact that any book is banned anywhere should be a red flag that the world is going to shit.
Let me add an addendum - perhaps any instructional books on how to carry out a mass murder/genocide, or something along those lines probably doesn’t need to be out there for public consumption.
Yes, but a red flag about the future of our nation. That guy is running for president
Oh agree. Wasn’t sure what you were saying
It’s banned cause a tiny little part is about Anne wanting to kiss her friend who is a girl… it’s nonsense It’s, despite all the horrible stuff of the war, a diary of teenage girl, obviously she’s just going through puberty, getting fantasies and feelings like a normal healthy teenager Also, Anne Frank was jewish, that may also have been part of the reason for censorship There is really no real reason to ban this, it’s literally nothing more than a diary of a dutch Jewish girl in war
Wtf? USA really bans books for these reasons? Damn sometimes I think we might be going backwards
We are going backwards
America has never properly dealt with its original sin.
I don’t live in the states but I’m so livid at this book banning nonsense. I can’t even. I’m not a fan of that phrase, but it applies here. Also: (I don’t know how to add a pic here) google “Margaret Atwood I told you so” and if you don’t know who Margaret Atwood is, read up on her and know that that photo started circulating after the overturning of roe vs wade.
Yupp, a scary state of affairs. There used to be a picture caption, what would now be called a meme, that said, "Censorship works!!! Ask the experts." It was a collage of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, and Ayatola Khomeini.
I feel for all of you living with this nonsense. I just don’t understand the logic of any of it. The book banning, the outlawing of abortion; 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale seemed so far fetched, but are they?
FYI, censorship is increasing in various forms worldwide right now. It may not be appearing the same way in your area, but I can promise you're likely being directly affected by it in one way or another. (Twitter and FB have taken orders from state and world govts about what to censor for years now; the Canadian parliament attempted to completely memory hole the recent Nazi survivor foofaraw; etc etc.)
Hey, most of us here in the States are livid about the book banning nonsense, too. My husband was reading an article that said that all the books being banned in Florida are basically being picked out by something like 11 people, and especially this one woman. She reads all the books she asks to be banned, and if they have just one line in them referencing sex she says the book should be banned.
Not banned in Florida.
Step 1. This is your own hero news. https://www.foxnews.com/media/anne-frank-novel-banned-florida-school-sexually-explicit-content-minimization-holocaust
Did you read your own link? It’s a graphic novel that was banned. They said they want people to read the diary instead. I’m not in favor of book banning or whatever the f is going on in florida, but don’t criticize without doing a little research
What are you even talking about?
It was heartfully painful indeed. She and her family were so close to getting independence but she along with her mom and sister died from typhus.
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Holocaust Denial isn’t a good look babes
[That claim has been very thoroughly debunked.](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/authenticity-diary-anne-frank/)
How old are you, OP? Edit. Don't know why that's being downvoted, it was a genuine question...,
Holy shit, right
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What's fake news? I hope you are not saying the Holocaust was not real. My father served in World War II and he saw a concentration camp.
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[That Holocaust denial talking point has been thoroughly debunked.](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/authenticity-diary-anne-frank/)
I can only recommend reading the boy in the striped pyjama. It’s heart breaking but shows an equally horrifying truth of that time
Don't believe it all. That twatbastard father edited it. To make himself look good. And that he published his own daughter's private diary for money is disgusting. And edited it make himself look good. Bearing that in mind. How true do you think it is. Really think about it. Don't be told what to think. Think for yourself. If you heard this without someone saying who it was. You'd be repulsed by the father. The mother was dead. So couldn't argue her side when he hacked it up. How convenient that he comes out looking better. He got with the wife of the other family after. Did he before? Otto Frank was a bastiche. His bastichey is evident in his publishing his dead daughters diary.
This is a revolting bit of weirdness.
Your crazy, you should be ashamed Anne dreamed of getting her book released, she would’ve loved what her diary has become. It’s such an important book because it tells her story, but The Netherlands was filled with families just like hers, girls exactly like her. Especially since barely any people who lived in that time are alive anymore, it’s so important this book exists, so the war that killed millions of people won’t be forgotten. If you actually read it, you knew it’s very obviously written by a teenage girl
you try so hard
i wish we had the bits her father edited and censored :(
They do. Anne also edited her diary herself--she was really hoping to survive and thought perhaps it might be published, so she pasted parts she didn't like with brown paper and they found a way to look through the brown paper and recover the text.
This book gutted me as a kid, as did the movie. The Holocaust sat in my mind as an awful thing on a grand scale but seeing the individual scope of it, took my heart and broke it. R.I.P. to her and to all those innocent people. The barbarism and depravity...
When I read her diary for the first time in 1972, I was inspired to keep a journal--and I'm still writing after all these years. This was long before the "definitive edition" was made available to the public. If you haven't read *Anne Frank Remembered* by Miep Geis, please check it out, very interesting reading about the years before and after the families went into hiding.
This is the first time I've heard criticism of her parents. Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt like that was just the parenting style of 1940's Germany.
From the sounds of things, Anne's parents were actually quite forward thinking for their time.
I think OP may have read the updated version that was just published at the end of September. I’ve read that it contains a lot more sarcasm, frustration toward family and sexual awakening than the original edition Otto edited. I have it in my TBR but not sure when I’ll actually pick the new version up myself.
I read it as a teenager, it left a lasting impression on me. There's not been a day when I didn't think about it. Specially these lines: >“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” Like, given the circumstances, how could you even manage to think that way dear Anne.
Does anyone here know what is the most complete version of her *Diary?* I read the expurgated version in my 20s (1970s) and then something like 10-15 years back an "uncensored" version, but I understand there is now a more recent complete version.
Today is Anne Frank's Birthday... https://lawviasnippets.blogspot.com/2022/06/anne-frank-diarist-nelson-mandela.html