The diary begins on June 12, 1942. For just over two years, from her hiding place in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the 13-year-old girl trusts and testifies. Her last diary entry is dated August 1, 1944. Ana was arrested and deported.
“I hope I can trust you with everything as I have never been able to trust anyone before; I also hope you will be a great support to me. With these words begins Anne Frank’s diary. The book, published by her father in 1947, has become a monument of world literature and an unparalleled account of Nazi barbarism.
Born in Frankfurt in 1929, Anne Frank emigrated with her family to the Netherlands in 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of a Germany in crisis. In 1942, while the authorities persecuted the Jews in the Netherlands, the Frank family moved to the “Annex”, a flat hidden behind a fake library, to escape the Gestapo.
Denounced in August 1944, the inhabitants of the “Annex” are deported to Auschwitz. Ana and her sister are taken to Bergen-Belsen. Anne dies of typhus between February and March 1945, shortly after her older sister, Margot.
Only 38,000 of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands survived the Nazi occupation, making the country one of the deadliest in Europe. Dutch professor Johannes Houwink ten Cate, from the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam, analyzes the importance of this literary monument.
France 24: When Anne Frank began to write her diary in June 1942, what was her life like?
Johannes Houwink ten Cate: It was the ordinary life of a teenager from the small Jewish middle class of Amsterdam at the time. His family was relatively modest, his father was an unsuccessful businessman. He lived in the working-class district of Rivierenbuurt (the river district), while wealthier German Jews lived in the south of Amsterdam.
Anne Frank did not have a religious upbringing. She came from a liberal German Jewish background. This contributed much to the influence of her diary: from the basement of her hideout, she continued to proclaim her commitment to humanistic and liberal values.
He was a very integrated person, with dreams far removed from Jewish orthodoxy. For example, he writes that his dream is to become a Hollywood movie star. She is a 13-year-old girl, entering puberty, who has exchanged kisses with a friend and who, like many girls of that age, argues a lot with her mother.
When his diary was published in 1947 by his father Otto, these passages were removed. They were only made public in 1986, when the NIOD (Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) published a “scientific” version, at a time when some in West Germany were questioning the authenticity of Anne Frank’s diary. .
F24: Why do you think she decided to write about herself in a diary?
JHtC: During the Nazi occupation of Europe, both in the West and in the East, many people wrote. It was about bearing witness and, in a way, regaining control of one’s life at a time when the Nazis were doing what they wanted in the territories they controlled.
This is the case of Anne Frank, who in her diary has a conversation with an imaginary friend, Kitty, her alter ego. I think for a girl her age, this was a way to combat her feelings of isolation and loneliness. At that time, her diary was intended for only one reader, herself. She then decided that it should be published and began to rewrite it. In this way, she turned her diary into a literary work, a coming-of-age novel.
F24: How do you explain the success of the Diary of Anne Frank and its continued appeal to new generations?
JHtC: Anne Frank was an innocent girl, a teenager. That’s why I think many young people identify with her. As long as there are 13-year-old girls around the world, there will be readers of the Diary of Anne Frank. Since 2011, there is even a Chinese translation.
In addition, she was not religious, and her story also touches non-Jews. She maintains faith in humanity and does not mention the Shoah (catastrophe). There are no murders or camps in her story. However, her diary is ultimately about the Shoah because we, her modern readers, know what she herself could not imagine: her horrible death in the Bergen-Belsen camp.
F24: Many books and investigations try to solve the enigma of the identity of the person who denounced the family of Anne Frank. How about?
JHtC: The book “Who Betrayed Anne Frank?” by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan explains how notary Arnold van den Bergh revealed Anne Frank’s hiding place in 1944 in Amsterdam. But there is no really strong evidence that this person was a Nazi collaborator. Furthermore, this man had been in hiding six months before Anne Frank’s arrest.
In the United States, the most recent books on Anne Frank, including the biographies of Melissa Müller and Carole Anne, reveal the identity of a new person. Throughout my career, I have heard of seven would-be traitors who allegedly “sold out” the teenager.
Americans love these kinds of plots and detective stories, but they are not proper scientific investigations.
*This article was adapted from its French original
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