Commentary on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Essay

Anne Frank

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl born on June 12th 1929 in Frankfurt Germany. She lived through the time that Hitler was ruling Germany. She had a father mother and a sister who was 3 years older than her.

At a young age, she had dreams of being a published author, and her father, Otto Frank, supported and encouraged her. On her 13th birthday, her father gave her a diary, that she later named Kitty.

Anne Frank was a social girl, but she didnt really have real friends that she could share secrets with. So she was ecstatic when she received that diary. On the first page she wrote: I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before She continued writing 2 days later and did so for the following 2 years. Who knew that this diary would result in one of the most published books about the Holocaust ever published?

After May 1940, good times rapidly fled: first the war, then the capitulation, followed by the arrival of the Germans she wrote. Thats when the suffering of Jews began. Hitler and the Nazis invaded and took over the Netherlands. The Germans anti-Jewish laws slowly took away the rights of Jewish people. Every Jewish person had to wear a yellow star to indicate that they were Jewish. They werent allowed to do much of anything they were able to do before; Jewish people even had a curfew. They had to be inside by 8:00 pm. Their freedom was strictly limited. But things were tolerable.

That was until Annes Sister, Margot, got a call up for the concentration camps. Her father had been making a back-up plan. They faked an escape to Switzerland but really went into hiding in the attic of her fathers office. They called it the secret Annex. Several other people were hiding there and it got really crowded. She continued to write in her diary, from arguments with her mother to falling in love with Peter Van Daan; but most of it was about the hot and cramped living conditions as well as the personality conflicts of the people that lived together in hiding. They had to black out the windows. Their only sunlight was a skylight that Anne spent hours looking out of. At first, going into hiding seemed like a cool adventure. She was wrong. She hated being in that little space not being able to go outside. She always had hope that they would one day be free.

Unfortunately, someone anonymously tipped off the Nazis that two Jewish families were hiding in the office. They were captured and sent to concentration camps. Her diary was left behind, kept by one of the girls that Anne was in hiding with. Anne Frank was supposed to go to the gas chamber, but she just turned 15 and was spared. But sadly, Anne Frank died of typhus (a disease transmitted by infected body lice or fleas) in early March 1945. This was only about a month before Jews were freed.

Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. He returned to the Netherlands to find Anne Franks Diary. Since he knew Anne wanted to become an author, he tried to get it published. Eventually he did.

It was translated in over 60 different languages.