Book review of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.

 

Her voice was preserved. Out of the millions that were silenced, this voice was no louder than a child's whisper... It has outlasted the shouts of the murders and has soared above the voices of time.
- Ernst Shnabel

It's fascinating how exactly the same 13 year old girls in the '40s and '90s are... em, "were"?

Before Hitler's anti-Jewish acts have their effect on her, Anne Frank's diary starts exactly like every teenage diary ever - I assume. I mean, I only have mine to go by. Okay, every empty-headed but super fun* teenage girl's diary. *yes, I'm flattering myself.

She starts out hilariously:

I'll begin from the moment I got you, the moment I saw you lying on the table among my other birthday presents. (I went along when you were bought, but that doesn't count.)

... but understandably loses some of her humor later on.

Anne Frank was Jewish. She kept a diary during the Holocaust of her feelings and what went on in the Annex.

You can't deny she had talent and would've made it as a writer. Such a shame.

Ho letto molti libri sull'Olocausto ma questo resta per me uno dei più belli e più toccanti mai letti

Narrative and truth are, at times, subjective especially in the case of narrative. Truth is also subjective. This idea of narrative and truth come into play in this book.Lee's book is somewhat a biography of Otto Frank as well as a proposal for who betrayed or informed on the Franks. The edition I have was apparently updated slightly after the furor raised by the first. It should be noted that this is not a complete look at the afterlife of Anne's diary, for that read Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.Lee does an excellent job of looking at Otto Frank, bopth before and after the attic hiding place. In particular, Lee's description of Frank's experiences in the camps and after liberation should be required reading in any class that is using the diary. Additionally, Lee is aware that the diary only presents one, extremely filtered view and Otto Frank himself didn't tell us (the reading public) much about Edith and Margot Frank. The two shadowy members of the Frank family get some acknowledgement here. Lee notes that it is extremely difficult to write about Edith as her family is dead, and as for Margot, her diary is missing and presumed destoryed. It is important, therefore, that she includes Otto Frank's reaction to reading some passages in Anne Frank's diary that include infromation about Margot.The book itself does make the reader think about some things. Not only of the characters of Edith and Margot Frank, but of the mystery of the other attic residents and even the helpers. Such as the question of fairness in some of the protrayals in the play and movie. Isn't it rather unfair to the family of Pfeffer (Dussel)? Anne's diary, in part re-written by her and then edited by her father- in what way does this change the narrative? Would Margot's diary have been more honest? Why the anger when one helper was going to write a book? Why was it okay for Miep to write one?Lee answer's some of these questions; Pfeffer's wife, for instance, thought about a lawsuit. She also offers, indirectly perhaps, a reason for Edith Frank's behavior in the attic (she wanted to emigrate to the U.S., long before Germany invaded the Netherlands).As to the question of the infomrer. I can't say that Lee answers it, and she is very careful to only present her theory as a theory, an unproven theory. Interested readers can read online the detailed study about the informer question put out by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (a website with a link to the file - http://www.battledetective.com/misc.html)