Anne Frank - The Story

║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║

Read the review of TownSquare Player’s Production

A Brief Look Into The Life of Anne Frank

Overview

Born on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. She and her family, along with four others, spent 25 months during World War II in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After being betrayed to the Nazis, Anne, her family, and the others living with them were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps. In March of 1945, nine months after she was arrested, Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. She was fifteen years old.

Her diary, saved during the war by one of the family’s helpers, Miep Gies, was first published in 1947. Today, her diary has been translated into 67 languages and is one of the most widely read books in the world.

The following are just 2 articles from hundreds that are available. If you would like to learn more about Anne Frank and the Holocaust these are 2 good places to start:
Anne Frank Museum
Anne Frank Center

With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity

as taken from Time Magazie
By ROGER ROSENBLATT

Along with everything else she came to represent, Anne Frank symbolized the power of a book. Because of the diary she kept between 1942 and 1944, in the secret upstairs annex of an Amsterdam warehouse where she and her family hid until the Nazis found them, she became the most memorable figure to emerge from World War II — besides Hitler, of course, who also proclaimed his life and his beliefs in a book. In a way, the Holocaust began with one book and ended with another. Yet it was Anne's that finally prevailed — a beneficent and complicated work outlasting a simple and evil one — and that secured to the world's embrace the second most famous child in history.

So stirring has been the effect of the solemn-eyed, cheerful, moody, funny, self-critical, other-critical teenager on those who have read her story that it became a test of ethics to ask a journalist, If you had proof the diary was a fraud, would you expose it? The point was that there are some stories the world so needs to believe that it would be profane to impair their influence. All the same, the Book of Anne has inspired a panoply of responses — plays, movies, documentaries, biographies, a critical edition of the diary — all in the service of understanding or imagining the girl or, in some cases, of putting her down.

"Who Owns Anne Frank?" asked novelist Cynthia Ozick, in an article that holds up the diary as a sacred text and condemns any tamperers. The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world — the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings.

As particular as was the Nazi method of answering "the Jewish question," it also, if incidentally, presented a form of the archetypal modern predicament. When the Nazis invaded Holland, the Frank family, like all Jewish residents, became victims of a systematically constricting universe. First came laws that forbade Jews to enter into business contracts. Then books by Jews were burned. Then there were the so-called Aryan laws, affecting intermarriage. Then Jews were barred from parks, beaches, movies, libraries. By 1942 they had to wear yellow stars stitched to their outer garments. Then phone service was denied them, then bicycles. Trapped at last in their homes, they were "disappeared."

At which point Otto and Edith Frank, their two daughters Margot and Anne and the Van Pels family decided to disappear themselves, and for the two years until they were betrayed, to lead a life reduced to hidden rooms. But Anne had an instrument of freedom in an autograph book she had received for her 13th birthday. She wrote in an early entry, "I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me." She had no idea how widely that support and comfort would extend, though her awareness of the power in her hands seemed to grow as time passed. One year before her death from typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp, she wrote, "I want to be useful or give pleasure to people around me who yet don't really know me. I want to go on living even after my death!"

The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition. Millions were moved by the purified version of her diary originally published by her father, but the recent critical, unexpurgated edition has moved millions more by disanointing her solely as an emblem of innocence. Anne's deep effect on readers comes from her being a normal, if gifted, teenager. She was curious about sex, doubtful about religion, caustic about her parents, irritable especially to herself; she believed she had been fitted with two contradictory souls.

All of this has made her more "useful," in her terms, as a recognizable human being. She was not simply born blessed with generosity; she struggled toward it by way of self-doubt, impatience, rage, ennui — all things that test the value of a mind. Readers enjoy quoting the diary's sweetest line — "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart" — -but the passage that follows is more revealing: "I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness; I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too; I can feel the sufferings of millions; and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again ... I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out."

Here is no childish optimism but rather a declaration of principles, a way of dealing practically with a world bent on destroying her. It is the cry of the Jew in the attic, but it is also the cry of the 20th century mind, of the refugee forced to wander in deserts of someone else's manufacture, of the invisible man who asserts his visibility. And the telling thing about her statement of "I am" is that it bears no traces of self-indulgence. In a late entry, she wondered, "Is it really good to follow almost entirely my own conscience?" In our time of holy self-expression, the idea that truth lies outside one's own troubles comes close to heresy, yet most people acknowledge its deep validity and admire the girl for it.

Indeed, they love her, which is to say they love the book. In her diary she showed the world not only how fine a person she was, but also how necessary it is to come to terms with one's own moral being, even — perhaps especially — when the context is horror. The diary suggests that the story of oneself is all that we have, and that it is worth a life to get it right.

It was interesting that the Franks' secret annex was concealed by a bookcase that swung away from an opening where steps led up to a hidden door. For a while, Anne was protected by books, and then the Nazis pushed them aside to get at a young girl. First you kill the books; then you kill the children. What they could not know is that she had already escaped.

The essayist Roger Rosenblatt is editor at large of Time Inc. He is the author of Children of War

Overview: Anne and Her Diaries

By:Suzanne Morine

Anne Frank was a girl living in Amsterdam during WWII. She received a diary for her thirteenth birthday (12 June 1942) and immediately started using it. Because of the anti Jewish decrees by the occupying Nazi German army, her parents had made plans to go into hiding if things would get much worse. When they learned that their other daughter, Margot, was to be sent away, they went through with the plan (6 July 1942). Anne took along her diary.

The hiding place was in a back extension to the building where Mr. Frank worked (address: 263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam). Their family was in hiding with four others and they were all helped by friends who had been working for Mr. Frank in the main building. They all kept everyone outside this circle (except Mr. Pfeffer's girlfriend) in the dark about their whereabouts. They did not write letters or send messages. They did not risk going outside. They were in hiding for about two years, until the Nazis found out about them, raided their hiding place (4 Aug 1944), and sent them to concentration camps. All but Anne's father were sooner or later killed, or died due to terrible conditions.

During the period of hiding, the Frank's friends found fresh diaries for Anne whenever she would fill one. They also kept a radio so they could keep up with news from outside. Among the dreary news reports one day (28 March 1944), was someone's speech about how, someday, after the war was over, people may want to read war diaries.

Anne, who wanted to be a journalist or writer, was very interested in this. She had been writing short stories and essays as well as diary entries. She imagined that a tale or diary of someone in hiding would be interesting to read if you weren't living it. She started re-writing her old diary entries, sticking to the original content, sometimes adding overlooked details, and occasionally omitting personal things. (The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, via handwriting analysis, concluded that she worked especially hard on this from 15 July 1944, on.) She even outlined a plan for name changes. She had almost got through re-writing the third diary when the hiding place was raided.

Anne was keeping all of her writing efforts together in an old briefcase (in case a fire broke out, for easy grab-and-run). She had four diaries and hundreds of pages of loose paper (the loose sheets were the re-writes of the diary, and most of her short stories and essays). During the raid, while waiting for the truck to take away the eight prisoners (plus two of the helpers), the Nazi officers dumped out the contents of the old briefcase, and put the valuables they had been stealing into it.

After the Franks and their friends were taken away and the officers had left, the two secretaries and the warehouseman — they weren't taken away — collected all of the diaries and pages that they could find in the pillaged hiding place. (One of the diaries [the second] was missing, however. Also, they did not retrieve Margot's diary — it's possible that only Anne knew she kept one, too.) This way, when the Nazis' moving van later came along to steal the furniture and everything from the hiding place, they did not get Anne's diaries and other writings. (The Nazis did not, in general, overlook diaries. They took them.) The secretaries had been friends of Anne's entire family and were helpers to the eight in hiding. Everyone knew that Anne's writing was very important to her. They looked forward to the end of the war and the day they'd reunite Anne with her writing efforts (kept private, unread, and safe).

When Anne's father returned, he was relieved to learn that the two helpers who had been arrested with them survived. He searched for word of what became of his family members. Shortly after he learned of Anne's death (typhus and starvation in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp), the secretaries gave him Anne's writings. He read them all and started trying to get people to publish her re-written diary: he wanted to fulfill her plans to publish it. Eventually he succeeded, and this book is Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which is the version of the diary that most people have read.

In 1980, Otto Frank died. He had left the diaries and writings to The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. The institute did document dating and handwriting analyses (found it authentic) and published the original diaries, with the re-writes. That book is The Diary of Anne Frank: the Critical Edition, which also includes historical background and facts surrounding Anne's life, as well as a report on the handwriting and document analyses.

Regarding the completeness of content of The Critical Edition, only a few short parts of the diary were omitted due to a personal nature (about people still living and not related to the Franks). In 1998, Cor Suijk revealed that five pages were kept secret longer than the rest of the diary. Otto had given him the pages to hold for him and it seemed to him time to release them. Excerpts of the pages were published online and they are mentioned in Anne Frank: The Biography, by Melissa Müller and The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, by Carol Ann Lee. In these pages, Anne criticized her father's marriage choice. It is apparent that, while Mr. Frank didn't want these diary statements made public in his lifetime, he also did not want to destroy them for all time. That is, apparently Mr. Frank had wanted them to be released only if this was sufficiently long after his death.

In addition to these publications, Anne's tales and essays are available in at least one book (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex translated by Michel Mok).

References:
The Diary of Anne Frank: the Critical Edition, prepared by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, Doubleday.
Also assorted other places mentioned in the Resources page, most notably an interview with Otto Frank about learning of his daughters' deaths, which I believe was in Anne Frank Remembered, the Disney Channel.

The Attic

The 2nd Floor

The 3rd Floor

When the thirteen-year-old and her family went into hiding from the Nazis, who were victimizing and arresting Jews, the diary went with her. She called it “Kitty,” and for the two years she spent in hiding, the diary was her solace, her confidant, her friend. What she recorded there were, in many ways, the ordinary thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl. But she was a teenage girl living under extraordinary circumstances in ominous times.

Eight people eventually came to live in the secret annex. There were the four members of the Frank family, Otto Frank, Edith Frank, Margot and Anne, three from the Van Pels family, Herman and Auguste Van Pels and their son Peter, and an elderly dentist named Fritz Pfeffer.

Anne used some fictitious names when she wrote in her diary. The van Daans were Hermann, Auguste, and Peter van Pels. Mr. Dussel was Fritz Pfeffer.

Life in the annex settled down to a monotonous routine. They woke at 06:45a.m. and by 08:30 they all had to be quiet as work began in the warehouse beneath them. Breakfast at 09:00 and after breakfast all movement was kept to an absolute minimum until 12:30 when the warehouse closed for lunch.

At this time, the inhabitants of the annex had lunch and listened to the BBC. At 14:00 the warehouse reponed and there was silence once again. Between 14:00pm and 17:30 time was spent resting or reading. When the warehouse closed at 17:30 everyone could move around again. At 21:00 preperations were made to go to bed.

At weekends the routine varied, with no welcomed visitors from downstairs and even more need to keep quiet to avoid attracting the slightest attention to what supposed to be an empty building.

Copyright ©2002 - 2005. All information regarding TownSquare Players, Inc. and their Productions are protected under law. No part of this site may be stored, or reproduced in any way, without prior agreement and written permission of the Administrator.