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Journal of a Jewish teenager describes the joys and torments of daily life and typical adolescent thoughts throughout two years spent in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
gangleri: The right to live, the right to freedom are the most basic rights. « Nebel im August » (a book written in German) is about the live of Ernst Lossa whom was not granted this right either. The book is written in a very lyrical style, it illustrates that we have more in common then we are aware and reminds us what is really important.… (more)
guurtjesboekenkast: Zowel Hélène Berr als Anne Frank zijn Joods en hebben een dagboek tijdens de oorlog geschreven. In 1945 zijn zij allebei aan tyfus overleden in het Duitse concentratiekamp Bergen-Belsen.
Zu diesem Buch gibt es nichts weiter zu sagen, als das was schon gesagt und geschrieben wurde. Ein traurige Geschichte eines mutigen Mädchen, welches nie die Liebe und die Hoffnung aufgegeben hat. ( )
I read this for the "a historical non-fiction book" part of my 2018 reading challenge. I think I enjoyed it more now than I did when I read it in school, Anne's diary is a terrific reflection of all girls growing up, and the additional trials of living in close quarters with other people. ( )
The Diary of a Young Girl is internationally celebrated for obvious reasons. This book contains the extraordinary musings of a girl in her early teens, hiding from the war with her family in a confined space for two years, and her well-captured thoughts that resonated with a lot of readers.
I generally avoid reading books that are related to the holocaust as the subject matter tends to leave behind these pangs of futile anger and melancholy. It's quite a tedious job to try and get rid of these feelings as quickly as possible in order to move on with your life and to come back to the real world, but I decided to give this book a try since many have claimed that this is a classic which must be read by everyone. I also happened to have acquired this book at a coffee shop for free, so more reasons to read this thing.
Initially, I read a few pages to get a gist of the content and it seemed like a relatively easy read, so I proceeded. This book's contents consist of the irregular "journal" entries of Anne Frank regarding her moods, the state of the place they were hiding in, the progress with the war, her relationship with the people around her and how they viewed her, her hopes and dreams, her witty observations of the adults that surrounded her, and all the other ups and downs. Since this is a diary that was written over two years, the readers are able to witness, as Anne ages, the observable changes that take place within her as a person. She becomes more and more introspective, as well as deeply observant throughout the years and funnily enough, she is aware of this phenomenon as Anne portrays herself as being extremely self-aware, which only makes sense.
Although the pace of the book is irregular now and then, Anne manages to mirror her sense of innocent curiosity onto the readers which captivates them. She doesn't drown us in her sorrow but rather manages to uplift our spirits along with hers.
Most of these pages are filled with the brimming hope for a better tomorrow that unfortunately never came - for her at least.
Great start and a great end. Lots of surprises in the diary. Still, there was a lot of repeated content and a significant amount of trivialities. Maybe all diaries are like this.
Overall, I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend the book. In fact, I wonder if there isn't a less famous, but more insightful book about the Jewish experience of the second world war. ( )
It is a truly remarkable book. Its revelation of the emotional turmoil and intellectual growth of an adolescent girl during extraordinarily difficult circumstances is psychologically fascinating. Its portrayal of ordinary people under frightful nervous strain and perpetual forced intimacy is wise and perceptive. Anne was precociously mature in her understanding of both herself and of others.
Anne Frank's diary is too tenderly intimate a book to be frozen with the label "classic," and yet no lesser designation serves... But her book is not a classic to be left on the library shelf. It is a warm and stirring confession, to be read over and over for insight and enjoyment.
I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.
Dedication
First words
Anne Frank kept a diary from June 12, 1942, to August 1, 1944. (Foreword)
[ Comment Added by Anne on September 28, 1942:] So far you truly have been a great source of comfort to me, and so has Kitty, whom I now write to regularly.
Of all the many remarkable things about Anne Frank, I believe the most important is the fact of her survival - a survival contained between the covers of a small red-checkered cloth-covered diary book. (Preface)
This is a remarkable book. (Introduction)
Sunday, 14 June, 1942 On Friday, June 12th, I woke up at six o'clock and no wonder, it was my birthday.
Anne Frank's diary is a work utterly complete in itself, and its eloquence requires no further comment. (Afterword)
Quotations
I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Last words
I can't keep that up: if I'm watched to that extent, I start by getting snappy, then unhappy, and finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what i would so like to be, and what I could be, if...there weren't any other people living in the world. Yours, Anne
[Definitive Edition] Until his death on August 19, 1980, Otto Frank continued to live in Birsfelden, outside Basell, where he devoted himself to sharing the message of his daughter's diary with people all over the world.
"Her voice was preserved," Ernst Schnabel wrote, "out of the millions that were silenced, this voice no louder than a child's whisper....It has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time." (Afterword)
Journal of a Jewish teenager describes the joys and torments of daily life and typical adolescent thoughts throughout two years spent in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
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"I haven't written for a few days, because I wanted first of all to think about my diary. It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because i have never never done so before, but because I have never done so before ,but because it seems to me that neither I- nor for that matter anyone else- will be interested in the unbecoming of a thirteen -year -old schoolgirl. Still , what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart." Anne Frank.
The Diary of Anne Frank is the story of a 13- year-old Jewish girl and her family who are forced into hiding by the Nazis during World War II.Anne Frank's world famous diary charts two years of her life from 1942 to 1944, when her family were hiding in Amsterdam life from German Nazis. The diary begins just before the family retreated into their 'Secret Annexe.' Anne Frank recorded mostly her hopes, frustrations, clashes with her parents and observation of her companions. Its first version, which appeared in 1947, was edited by both Anne and her father, Otto Frank when she discovered personal diaries would be published after the war. The book has received widespread critical and popular attention worldwide ever since.
On March 28, 1944, at around 7:30 in the evening, the residents of the Secret Annex were listening to Radio Orange, the broadcast service of the Dutch government-in-exile in London, when Gerrit Bolkestein, minister of education, arts and sciences, came on to deliver a special address announcing the planned creation of a national archive of material relating to the war years. And so she went back to the beginning and started over: rewriting her entries, adding new ones, deleting others, substituting pseudonyms for names. She had decided that she was going to publish this book—she would call it Het Achterhuis, “The House Behind,” or, as her hiding place has become known in English, “The Secret Annex”—after she was free.
After the raid on the Secret Annex, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two of the office workers who had sustained the Franks in hiding, found Anne's papers scattered on the floor and saved them. When the news came that she had died, Miep gave the pages to Otto with the words, “Here is your daughter Anne's legacy to you.”
Anne's first diary, kept in a red-checkered notebook, covers the period from June 12, 1942 to November 13, 1942. Two other notebooks have been found: one from December 22, 1943 to April 17, 1944; another from April 18, 1944 to August 1, 1944. The originals for the interim period—November 1942 to December 1943—are presumably lost. Moreover, Anne's voice had changed over those two years in hiding. The first version largely reads like the diary of a schoolgirl. The second is written in the voice of Anne that the world now knows: polished, thoughtful, mature.
But he couldn't publish only the second version, either. First of all, Anne likely hadn't finished recopying and rewriting it. More to the point, she had removed things that Otto felt should be left in—particularly her romance with Peter van Pels, which brightens the diary's atmosphere during the late winter and spring of 1944. The romance quickly ran its course—primarily, it seems, because Anne grew bored with Peter, who wasn't as introspective as she was—and she may have found the memory of it embarrassing. Nonetheless, Otto chose to override her, a decision that reveals his instinct for a good story. [ ] Otto did remove some of her harsher remarks about her mother and Mrs. van Pels, perhaps assuming, reasonably, that if Anne had known that they would die in the camps, she wouldn't have wanted them to be remembered in those terms.
Ein traurige Geschichte eines mutigen Mädchen, welches nie die Liebe und die Hoffnung aufgegeben hat. ( )