The Diary Of A Young Girl
Horalek launched a formal complaint asking for the unabridged version of the diary to be removed from the school, a petition now under review. She asked that the abridged version, sans graphic passages, be swapped in for the unabridged version. Otherwise, she said, the school should get parental permission before assigning the book.
The Diary of a Young Girl
What we know about the setting is based on details that Anne gives in her diary; readers can do further research into exactly where the locations were and what they looked like, but the only way to know about the setting in the book is through the eyes and descriptions of Anne herself. They are living in this house when Anne receives her diary for her thirteenth birthday.
There are two basic settings in the diary: in the Frank's home, where they are living in Amsterdam at the beginning of World War II, and the secret annex, a section of a building added on to the main building, that her family hides away in, along with four other people, to escape the Nazis. The majority of the entries from Anne's diary are written in the annex.
Anne does not go into extensive detail with descriptions about her home before her family was forced to leave it and go into hiding; she received her diary and started recording entries less than a month before they went into hiding. Readers of the diary can make inferences about her lifestyle, though, from some details she includes. We can assume that her home was comfortable and that her family belonged to the upper middle class because her father had a secure job as a manager of a company that made products for producing jam. In the diary, Anne mentions talking on the telephone, a technological luxury that not all families might have had in the 1940s. She also says at one point that she enjoys reading on their balcony, outdoor spaces for leisurely activities. We also get an idea of the size of the Frank house when Anne mentions that they had rented the big upstairs bedroom to a divorcee.
In one early section of the diary, Anne describes her classmates and her perceptions of them. One classmate in particular she believes is poor and lives in another neighborhood across town; this description seems to draw a sharp contrast between this girl and Anne's own life, further emphasizing the idea that the Frank's lived in general comfort and economic prosperity before they had to leave their home and go into hiding.
Anne describes the annex in detail in her entry dated Thursday, July 9, 1942. She describes a building that includes a warehouse, a front office at the top of a set of stairs, and a series of other offices on the first two floors. There is a staircase that leads up to the third floor, the front portion of which is an attic and storage area, while the ''annex'' is the back portion of the third floor, which is all behind another door. Though Anne does not mention it in this portion of the diary, it is well-known that a bookcase stood in front of the doorway leading to the annex to further obscure it. Visitors to the Anne Frank Museum can see a restoration of the bookcase:
One of the many fascinating things about the setting of Anne Frank's diary is that it is real and it still exists. The house with the annex in which Anne hid is on Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam and is now a museum that tells the story of Anne and her family's lives, the experiences of others during the Holocaust, and a restored annex to show what the hiding space actually looked like.
In Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, the setting is split into two places: Anne Frank's family home in Amsterdam, which is comfortable, modern, and spacious, then, when the family goes into hiding, the rest of the diary takes places in the secret annex. Anne describes the secret annex in more detail, probably because she herself finds it more interesting and out-of-the-ordinary. The annex is located in an upstairs and back portion of the building where her father worked and requires climbing several flights of stairs and going through several doorways, one of which was covered by a bookcase, to access it. The annex is something people can still visit today as it has been converted into a museum about Anne Frank, her family, and other experiences of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank keeps her diary from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944. In the over two years of her being in hiding, she fills a number of notebooks. In 1947 her father Otto Frank publishes the diaries. It would become one of the best-read books in the world.
Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death.
Night is one of the masterpieces of Holocaust literature. First published in 1958, it is the autobiographical account of an adolescent boy and his father in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel writes of their battle for survival and of his battle with God for a way to understand the wanton cruelty he witnesses each day. In the short novel Dawn (1960), a young man who has survived World War II and settled in Palestine joins a Jewish underground movement and is commanded to execute a British officer who has been taken hostage.
Anne Frank is given a diary by her parents for her thirteenth birthday on 12th June 1942 and begins writing in it. Anne confesses that she has always wanted a friend she could confide in and hopes this diary will be that for her. She details that although her family are originally from Frankfurt in Germany, they have moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to escape the persecution of Jews in Germany. Even in the Netherlands, she and her older sister, Margot, must attend a school for Jewish students.
At first, Anne's diary records a relatively normal adolescence. She writes of school, friendships, and the boys she is interested in. However, the persecution of Jews by the Nazis gradually gets worse and current affairs sometimes creep into her writings. Everything changes when the SS calls Margot to report to a Nazi work camp.
Anne Frank's last diary entry is on 1st August 1944. It describes a relatively normal day in which nothing extraordinary happens. This is where her writing ends. An afterword tells readers that a few days after her last entry, the Frank family were betrayed to the SS and captured. Anne and Margot were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne and Margot died of typhus in the spring of 1945, mere weeks before Allied soldiers liberated the camp.
Anne Frank writes these diaries during the first years of her adolescence. She is an intelligent and talkative girl with many opinions. Her outgoing side frequently leads to clashes with others living in the Annex.
Anne has a love for writing and deep creative talent. While in hiding, she uses writing as her solace, alleviating the loneliness she feels. As The Diary of a Young Girl progresses, Anne changes. Much of her writing seems mature beyond her years, but this is likely due to the horrendous situation she has found herself in. Anne has been forced to grow up while still a very young woman.
Margot is not a significant focus of Anne's diaries. She is older than Anne, who sees her as quite sophisticated. Margot is also more reserved and proper than her younger sister. She obeys social conventions of the behaviour expected of young girls much more than Anne does. Anne also remarks that Margot is very pretty.
Anne and Edith's relationship is markedly different. They clash constantly, and Anne blames her mother for many of these arguments. Anne believes her mother to be cold and uncaring. She often writes about her quite harshly. However, it is difficult to know how much truth there is to this. It is possible that Anne was merely a young teenager in one of the most strenuous situations imaginable and was lashing out as a result.
Peter is another young person caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust. He is shy and innocent, often finding refuge in childishness. Anne dislikes these traits about him and pays little attention to Peter when they first enter the Annex. After a period, she develops an interest in him, and they share a romantic relationship. This lasts for a time, but Anne eventually realises she was merely idealising Peter as he was the only hope of romance she had.
Anne Frank grows and matures throughout her diaries. They capture a critical period in her early adolescence as she explores her identity and sexuality for the first time. She details the more innocent interactions she had with boys as a young girl. Readers can see this develop into more serious attraction as Anne ponders her feelings towards Peter in the Annex.
Anne's process of maturing into an adult is hindered, stunted, and eventually stopped by her surrounding circumstances. Living through the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl in Europe was an unimaginably difficult position to be in. Anne cannot experience the outside world as her family must hide away in the Annex. This means Anne has no peers to experience her young life with. She also lives in a state of constant fear that her family's position will be revealed to the authorities. Anne's death at a tragically young age is one of many young lives cut short due to the actions of the Nazis.
The premise of the war also impacts those in the Annex, particularly the young Anne. They are in hiding merely because of who they are as Jewish people. Anne knows that outside their hiding place, there are thousands of Jews being tortured and murdered for no reason. She often feels a sense of guilt for remaining hidden while they suffer so much. 041b061a72