by Anne Frank
translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday
The universally known story
of how Anne, thirteen to fourteen at the time of writing, was hidden
from the Nazis in the secret upstairs room of an office, along with her
sister, parents, another family (the Van Daans) and a dentist. She
describes her fights with her mother, moons over boys, dwells on her
reading and studies, and describes the political situation. When the
Nazis begin carting Jews off to camps, the diary turns more thoughtful
as she describes the stress and discomfort of eight people hiding
quietly in cramped quarters. They deal with burglars, the police
(equally frightening), rotten food, shared chamber pots, and frayed
nerves. She and the Van Daans’ boy, Peter, start to have romantic
feelings for one another, and at this point the diary becomes half tween
girl typically pining for and pinning her eternal happiness on this one
boy, and half startlingly mature ruminations on war, human nature, her
own talents, and her desire to put her “high ideals” into practice and
better the world. And there, the diary ends, three days before they were
betrayed, and a month later they would be among the last Jews sent to
the death camps, less than two months before the Allies liberated
Holland.
What can one say about this book? I should have read it
earlier. Everyone should read it. It’s the achingly sad, human face of
the Holocaust. Anne presciently wrote that she wished “to go on living
even after my death,” and she did, perhaps even in a way she would have
accepted if given the choice, knowing her writing would shine a light on
evil for the next hundred years or more.
five stars
