Timeless masterpiece. Review on Diary of a Young Girl, The - Anne Frank

A war has two sides – the victor and the vanquished. Almost all historical accounts are always one-sided, either the winners’ or the losers’. Our very own history is a perfect example. While the Indian Nationalists term the events of 1857 as “The Revolt” the British historians choose to call it “A Sepoy Mutiny”. Lost in the midst of these debates, are the stories of the victims, the civilians. Anne Frank wrote in her diary on 3 May 1944, “I don’t believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists... the common man is every bit as guilty, otherwise people and nations would have rebelled long ago!

There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed only to start all over again!” Circa 2004 and one realizes that times still haven’t changed. The fact that Anne Frank was only a fifteen-year-old when she wrote these lines in her diary simply astonishes the reader. The Diary of a Young Girl is the edited and translated version of Anne Frank’s diary that she kept from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944. Editors Mirjam Pressler and Otto Frank the latter was Anne’s father and the sole member of his family who survived the Holocaust, have done an excellent job of keeping the “soul” of the diary intact, while removing details that were likely to be subjected to censorship at that time. Susan Massotty has done an excellent job in translation from Dutch, preserving the original’s content and character.

The photograph of the smiling Anne Frank on the book’s cover invites one to read her story (written in the form of letters addressed to her diary, Kitty). The diary gives an account the Frank family in Amsterdam during the Second World War. The Franks and their other Jewish friends, the van Daans (van Piels) family and Albert Dussel went into hiding with the help of their non-Jewish acquaintances for a period of two years till they were discovered. Anne Frank kept a diary from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944.The diary gives an account of the day-to-day business of the families in hiding at the “Secret Annexe” of her father’s workplace at Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. Her diary is one of the most popular accounts written by the victims of the Holocaust. The diary depicts the transformation that Anne went through during those two years in hiding. From a carefree schoolgirl who had many admirers in her neighbourhood Anne grew up to be a slightly reserved teenager seeking love and understanding from people around her.

The diary is a record of day-to-day events that took place in their secret hideout - the closed environment, where one got to interact with only a dozen odd people, their daily struggles and how they coped up with them and with each other. What makes the book immensely popular is that it is about an ordinary teenager on her way to discovery of herself, and the very ordinary events that happen in her life in an extraordinary situation (which was quite a common situation for the Jews in Western Europe during the Holocaust). She had written about her all the occupants of the Secret Annexe, giving elaborate descriptions of each, both physical as well as character descriptions. She described her relations with her mother and her elder sister, Margot, that were very strained but how she loved her father though he would often side with her mother. She wrote about the fights that would take place between the senior van Daan’s and how their son, Peter would feel alone, craving for love.

She described her intimacy towards Peter with whom she shared her first kiss. Anne wrote about the troubles she faced as a teenager, as she was searching for herself and about her curiosity and confusion about sex (Peter became her tutor in this respect). It is probably this ordinary story that draws one to this book. Day-to-day events do seem very tedious and even excruciating at times. The reader hopes that something extraordinary will happen and goes on reading further. Very often one wants to go back again and again. Even after reading it many times one likes to go back to it again. Anne had captured the moods of the various people in the hiding in a rather intriguing way. She had a way with words and she had the ability to pen down her varied and often-discontinued thoughts, she was able to transcribe her thoughts in a manner that many can’t. It may be more than fifty years since Anne Frank’s diary was first published. Such is the timelessness of this literary piece that it continues to enthrall the readers as much now as it did then. Ordinary stories of the ordinary people are indeed of extraordinary significance.