Remembering Anne Frank

Anneliese Marie Frank was born at Frankfurt, Germany on this day in 1929. The Franks were solid members of the Jewish community there, her father was involved in some banking, managed a spa, and manufactured cough drops. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the family moved to Amsterdam. Anne received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, which took on unusual significance less than a month later when her sister Margot was ordered to report for deportation on 5 July 1942. The family went into hiding the next day. They lived in a sealed in apartment until they were arrested on 4 August 1944, based on the word of an informant never identified, which ended the diary. Young Anne Frank had much hope to share with the world, even if her life ended in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls.

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 live in a crazy time.

Have my parents forgotten that they were young once? Apparently they have. At any rate, they laugh at us when we're serious, and they're serious when we're joking.

I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

     All from Anne Frank, 1929 – 1945

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James A. Restucci is the author of this blog. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internal License.

2 Responses to Remembering Anne Frank

  1. Jeanine says:

    In recent years it has been learned that Otto Frank edited his daughter’s diaries, so the picture we, as readers, get of the holocaust through her eyes is a partial and often Otto influenced picture.

  2. TVNews says:

    She was very young and wide eyed. But we all have something in common in that we too live in “a crazy time.”