Everyone knows the story of Anne Frank’s diary. Anne Frank was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who started writing in her diary on 14 June 1942 during the Second World War in Amsterdam. On 5 July, her sister Margot was summoned to report to a Nazi labour camp, and the next day, the Frank family went into hiding. They lived in the Annex, a hidden area of Otto Frank’s company building, alongside another family of three and a single man, until 4 August 1944, when they were discovered by the Nazis. They were deported to Nazi concentration camps, from which only Otto Frank, Anne’s father, would survive. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen aged 15, just one month before the camp was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945. This diary provides an incredible account of life in hiding, and it is heartbreaking to read knowing how it ends, although I was amazed by the courage and hope in Anne’s writing. It was truly a horrible period in history.
“I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding; if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for…everything.” May 26, 1944
Original title: Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944
Translated from Dutch