THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL
BY ANNE FRANK
PUBLISHED: 1947
AVERAGE RATING: 4.08
283 PAGES
★★★★★

There has forever been this book that has moved me more than any other. “The Diary of A Young Girl” by Anne Frank is probably one of the best known books from WWII, and this is my explanation why.

In 1947 there was a book published with the author name: Anne Frank. The book was discovered in the attic in which Anne Frank spent the last years of her life. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom and constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.

I purchased the book when I was at this exact Secret Annexe in Amsterdam, a place I will always remember as one of the most interesting and tragic places I’ve ever been - and the book has forever given me tears while reading it. And one of the things that really struck me, and the thing that has really made an imprint on me is a quote from the book.

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”.

Anne Frank was probably one of the smartest thirteen-year-olds who have ever lived, and I have to say that I really want to read this book over again. In her diary she recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

The book isn’t exactly a fictional book, but the way everything is told makes it sound so unreal and totally made up - and all though we know that the book is written by someone who experienced the world war II as a young girl, we can’t seem to believe it until we read her last entry.

This was one of the first real books I read, and I’ve read it like ten times after, all though the style, like reading someone’s diary has never been my kind of thing, I also love the fact that they never changed it, that they kind of kept it in that form so that we could see when she had time to write, and how strange it was to read the last pages, knowing that the day would soon come.

I remember having a presentation in history class when we were going to present a historical person, and everyone in class chose presidents and people like Gandhi or Stalin and Hitler, but I chose to spread some light on someone I knew quite a lot about. So I presented Anne Frank to the class with the background of actually being to the place where she’d hid, and all though I aced it, got an A and everything, I thought to myself that we often tend to forget the people that made a difference, just not through actions, but through words written in a small book hidden in a room that was forever going to be iconic to one of the worst things ever to happen in our small world.