The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

Anne Frank and her family hid in the back of an Amsterdam warehouse for two years in an effort to escape the horrors of Nazi Occupation. Only thirteen when her family went into the Secret Annex, she reveals her daily life as the world around them succumbed to the worse horror the modern world had seen, facing hunger, the threat of discovery and death, estrangement from the outside world, and above all, the boredom, the petty misunderstandings, and the frustrations of living in such confined quarters.

Publisher: Maple Press - Memoir
Year: (This edition 2008) Paperback
Pages: 350
ISBN: 978-8190739146

Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl is my July return to school read.  I was probably the same age as Anne Frank the first time I read this and nearly 40 years on it is still as memorable. Anne Frank had just celebrated her 13th birthday when she and her family went into hiding in the annex in Amsterdam.  Anne, her sister Margot and her mother and father shared the annex with another family who she calls the Van Dams in her diary and a dentist who she called Mr. Dussel. For the next two years they would be confined within the annex relying on others to provide them with their food and other essentials.  Within her diary Anne describes the every day events which she constructs in the way of a letter to her friend Kitty.  The content of her letters to Kitty would contain anything from a disagreement to the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.  It was one morning at the beginning of August 1944 that the family and the rest of the inhabitants of the annex were apprehended.  Otto Frank, Anne's father was the only survivor of his immediate family.  His wife had died of exhaustion and starvation, Anne and Margot had both died of Typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  Miep Gies who had been one of the families helpers during their time in hiding had discovered Anne's diary following their capture and had kept it safe until she could reunite it with Anne.  When Otto Frank discovered the loss of his family Miep Gies gave him Anne's diary.  Otto Frank decided to keep his daughter's wish to have her diary published. He and his second wife traveled to schools and gave talks right up until his death in the 80's.   The annex in Amsterdam is now Anne Frank museum and has had millions of visitors.  This is somewhere I am yet to visit but one day I will have to get there.

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