I don’t think this one needs much explanation. Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam, where she moved as a child from Frankfurt. When the Nazis sent a summons for her older sister to report to a German “work camp,” she and her family went into hiding in an annex stowed away in the back of her father’s office. She lived there for a little over two years with her family and four others: Otto’s buisiness partner Mr. van Daan, his wife Mrs. van Daan, their son Peter, and a local dentist Mr. Dussel (the names are all pseudonyms; the Van Danns were Van Pels and Dussel’s last name was Pfeffer. But I know them better by the names Anne gave them, so I’ve used them here).
During her time in the Annex and a bit before, Anne kept a diary where she recorded her thoughts and feelings, alongside events both quotidian and newsworthy. Life in the annex, with its myriad indignities, frustrations ,and small joys are recorded in great and evocative detail, interspersed with news gleaned from their helpers or the contraband radio. Every entry is addressed to Kitty, a fictitious figure that Anne invented to make her diary feel more conversational.
There is little to say about the structure, since it’s a diary and not beholden to pacing or format in any real sense. Still, it is an engaging read. Anne was a gifted writer, and very well would have been famous in her own right, had not the tragic and evil events of World War II taken her life before she had a chance to bring her gifts to fruition. She also speaks with much frankness (I’m sorry for the pun; I can’t think of a more approriate word) about her sexual feelings and maturity, which is surprising from a book of its time (apparently these passages were excised on original publication and only added back later).
The one other thought that struck me as I read, which never occured to me when first reading it as a teenager, was what it must have been like for Otto Frank to read and edit his dead daughter’s diary. Her love for him is clea,r but not everything she wrote is flattering ,and she was quite hard on her mother. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to do that. It was truly an act of bravery, and of love.
Anne’s diary should be required reading in school. It remains accessible and humanizes an awful period in history that is so huge, so monstrous in its evil, that it can almost feel impersonal. Six million murdered jews is a loss on a scale too large to easily wrap your head around. But thinking of that one girl, with her jokes and her dreams, murdered for the stupidest and pettiest possible reason, gives a foothold to the tragedy.