Who is Anne Frank? In fact, that is not the point

The diary of Anne Frank is neither written by a popular writer nor by a known one. It was actually written by Anne Frank (special ed. 2007). Departing from the title, many facts come to the mind: that the book is a diary, that the diary belongs to Anne Frank, that the name of the author is present in the title, that the author is a girl and her name is Anne Frank. However, all the presuppositions that emerge from the title seem minor, irrelevant, almost meaningless and even quite naïve when our thinking and imagination are immersed in the dark side of humanity, between 1942 and 1944, where Holland was not characterized by its wooded lands, as the etymology holds (Wikipedia, n.d.), but by lands covered in blood, death, prosecution, living clandestinely.

On 12 June in 1942, Frank celebrated her thirteenth birthday. Her parents gave her a present that she longed to have: a diary. The diary is an impressive record of the daily lives of real people who lived in constant fear due to Nazi ideology. The first hints to the story are traced with horrendous expressions such as prosecution, hostility, concentration camp. Between these words, the name of Anne, a child, is present. Her family lived in Frankfurt, but Hitler´s anti-Jewish thinking mobilized the Franks to Amsterdam, Holland. The family was finally apprehended in 1944 and Anne died of typhus. Imagine a child or any person living in “purposefully unsuitable hygiene conditions”, suffering from extremely high fever, backache, several headaches, and delirium (Wikipedia, n.d.).

Even though her mental condition deteriorated slowly but severely due to her illness and the Nazi harassing, Frank was able to write and describe the holocaust in which she was surrounded by. She wrote a long list of the things she could not do: “Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: (. . .) Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; Jews were forbidden to sit in their gardens or those of their friends after 8:00 P.M.; Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes; Jews were required to attend Jewish schools, etc.” (Frank House, n.d.).

Human disaster described in the book would not have become opaque if the author had excluded unpleasant sexual descriptions of her mother and other people living with the family. However, the book is recommendable as the author makes a memorable and believable heroine in a world of sadness and horror. It is also remarkable that the clarity with which this child describes many everyday situations brings those moments of extreme cruelty back to us vividly.  Frank expresses a view to the effect that in spite of the terrifying and devastating denotation of atrocities and systematic murder, one finds refuge in her innocence.

Reference

Anne Frank House (n.d.). Anti-Jewesh measures. Retrieved in November 2011, from: http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Franks-History/The-Nazis-occupy-the-Netherlands/Anti-Jewish-Decrees/

Frank, A. (special ed. 2007). Diario de Ana Frank. Santiago de Chile: Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología.

Wikipedia (n.d.). The diary of a young girl. Retrieved in November 2011, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl