The Diary of a Jewish Teenager
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda , MD
Anne Frank was a young teenager, with nothing special to distinguish her from her peers, except for the misfortune that she had been born in a Jewish family during the Nazi era in Germany. Neither she nor her family had been involved in any political or religious movements, but that did not matter. When Hitler’s Nazi party took control in Germany in 1933, life became very difficult for the Jewish minority. Anne’s family sought refuge in Holland, but was forced to go into hiding, when German armies invaded and occupied that country in 1940.
Eventually they were discovered in their hiding place by the Gestapo, arrested, and along with thousands of other Jews, herded to the dreaded Nazi extermination camp in Auschwitz in occupied Poland. As the advancing Soviet armies were closing in during the final phase of the Second World War, she was transferred to the Bergen-Balsen concentration camp in Germany. There weakened and enervated by the rigors of incarceration, Anne Frank died at the age of fifteen from typhus fever.
Although she died under wretched conditions at a death camp, the legacy she left behind, the remarkable diary she kept from 1942-1944, while in hiding, has made her memory immortal and her story everlasting.
The Diary of a Young Girl , documents the trials and tribulations of a Jewish family sequestered day and night in an attic of a warehouse in Amsterdam. Originally published in Holland in 1947, the book initially was not appreciated nor did it elicit much interest. However, following the publication of its English translation in the United States in 1952, its popularity soared, its sale reaching millions of copies. Since then, the diary has been translated into more than 30 languages and has become one of the best recognized works of literature emerging from the Second World War period. Several movies and plays based on Anne Frank’s story have also been made and have spawned much sympathy for the plight of Jewish people under the Nazi regime.
Life for Anne’s family had not always been disagreeable. Her father, Otto Frank, was a successful businessman in Frankfurt, Germany, in the thirties. With the Nazi takeover of Germany, the political landscape of the country underwent a radical change. Frank foresaw the coming peril and decided to emigrate to Holland, which had not yet been occupied by Hitler’s forces. The peaceful life he built there proved only ephemeral, as Holland, much like the rest of Europe, soon capitulated to Hitler’s invading armies.
As narrated by Anne, Jews were required to wear a yellow star for easy recognition, and barred from using public transportation or riding bicycles. They could shop during limited, specified hours and only at designated outlets. Their movement was also restricted, and they were directed to stay indoors after 8 pm. Anne was too young to discern the full implications of these draconian restrictions, and continued to cheerfully attend her local school. Unfortunately, even this meager privilege was to end soon. She was taken out of her school and sent to enroll in a special school designated for Jews.
The situation continued to deteriorate and stories of wanton arrest and deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp became widely known. Then the horror hit home when Anne’s older sister, Margot, sixteen-year old at the time, received an order to report to German authorities in Amsterdam. It was an ominous development. Otto Frank decided to go into hiding with his family in the attic of the warehouse which he had prepared for such an eventuality. They were joined there by another Jewish family.
During the days of relative freedom and before the family went into hiding, Anne had received a diary as a birthday gift from her father, which she used to record the events in her daily life, exhibiting much insight and literary elegance. Her diary provides a window into deprivations of life under captivity, and the emotional ups and downs experienced by people involuntarily thrown together in a confined space. She describes the terror they felt whenever there was an unusual sound outside their hideout. At other places in the diary, we find the portrayal of swings of human emotions; the sibling rivalry with her sister, her dislike for her mother when she was disciplined and her brief, adolescent romance with a boy a few years older than herself. The last entry in the diary was made just a few days before the family was discovered.
The captives could not have survived without strong outside support. Some of their Christian friends, risking their own lives, surreptitiously smuggled in food which was scarce at the time and other necessities of life. One of these noble souls was a former employee and close friend of Otto Frank, Miep Gies, who courageously helped shelter them and took care of their essential needs. Her death announced at the age of 100 in January this year, brought back the attention of the world press to the story of Anne Frank and her family, more than half a century after her death. Gies had also played a crucial role in salvaging the diary and making it available to the world. When the German Gestapo came to arrest Anne’s family, they diligently searched their belongings, but fortuitously decided that the scattered pages of the handwritten diary had no value. Gies saved it and gave it to Anne’s father, after he returned to Amsterdam at the end of the war, the sole survivor of the group of eight people who had taken refuge in the attic.
Today, one wonders how a community that suffered so much pain and persecution over the millennia can inflict untold atrocities on the Palestinians in the occupied lands. There are no ready answers, but it seems that most nations, when possessing unchallenged power and authority, are capable of behaving in an appalling manner, having learnt little or nothing from their own history.
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