ANNE FRANK
Anne Frank’s last diary entry was this day in 1944, 2 years into the life of hiding her and her Jewish family were forced into by Nazi Germany during WWII.
Millions of people who were Jewish, homosexual, ethnic, mentally retarded, developmentally challenged and physically handicapped were murdered by the Nazi’s. What makes Anne’s life stand out is her diary published by her only surviving family member after the war and her untimely death.
Anne Frank recorded the details of her life in a diary she was given by her father on her 13th birthday, just one month before they were forced to flee their apartment for a safe house, until this day in 1944. She was arrested 3 days later on August 4th, 1944.
She writes daily of mundane things, of historical events and of the interpersonal dynamics and living conditions they had to endure between themselves and with other fellow Jews, who had up until that point been total strangers and were all forced to live in a confined space together.
It’s an eloquent work for such a young girl living through the most insane, horrific conditions of fear and confinement and deprivation.
Although her and her family were well cared for by sympathizers, they were eventually betrayed. The family was torn apart - her and her sister were sent to the Bergin-Belsen concentration camp and her parents to Auschwitz where her mother, Edith, was murdered by the Nazi's through death by starvation. As were hundreds of thousands of others.
Anne died in March of 1945 of typhus from the decrepit and inhumane conditions of the prison camp that killed over 17,000 people at the same time. The Bergin-Belsen camp was liberated less than a month later sometime in April/May 1945. Too late for little Anne and her sister, Margot. As for the 100,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands that were murdered in concentration camps, less than 5,000 survived, including Anne’s father.
Her father, Otto, made his way back to the safe house reuniting with the people that had tried desperately to save them and was given back all the family’s possessions. The conspirators had kept everything in the faint hope that any of the family would make it back to reclaim their lives. At the bottom of the trunk of his family's personal possessions, lay Anne’s diary, discovered in a nook and saved. Anne’s father had no idea that she had not only saved her diary but had actually utilized it every night during the 2-plus years they were forced to hide. He was stunned to read her words regarding the family and the life they had been forced to abandon and the life they were forced to lead in stark terror.
Otto Frank published his beloved daughters diary posthumously in 1947 and it remains a best seller to this day. The book is critically acclaimed and gives one of the most genuine heartwrenching first person accounts of the days leading up to and through the Nazi atrocities. Yesterday, July 31, 2009 it was announced that the book has been placed on the UNESCO* documentary heritage list and is now officially considered a world treasure.
Anne Frank’s voice continues to ring loudest of all Nazi camp victims and resonates through the years to all of today and tomorrow. We must never forget. The senseless abuse and murder of her, her family and those of the millions of others lost in the Holocaust should always be remembered as a lesson to future generations.
And her last entry? She wrote: "I am very bored. The entire day I am walking around the room. I have nothing to do."
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I love Anne Frank's book. It's so sad yet eye opening at the same time.
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