cognitive dissident

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (New York: Doubleday, 1995)

In honor of Banned Books Week this year (9/27-10/4), I've read Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. (Last year, I read a selection of Beat books; this year, I'm so far behind on my reading that I only had time for a single volume.)

If there truly are people who need no introduction, then Anne Frank is one of them. The words of her diary have outlived her by decades, and I suspect will do so for centuries--if not millennia--to come. After tackling other Holocaust books over the past few years, I felt it was finally time to read Anne Frank's book in full. I settled on the Definitive Edition, which is nearly a third longer than the 1947 original, and restores passages that Anne's father Otto--the only Annex resident to survive the Holocaust--edited out as unflattering or excessively personal.

It seems voyeuristic at times to become so engrossed in the innermost thoughts of a teenage girl who suffered such a gruesome fate in the months following her family's extradition to the Nazi death camps, but the value of Ms Frank's diary is inestimable. She began her diary (which she called "Kitty) on 12 June 1942, moved to the Annex on 5 July 1942, and was captured by the Nazis over two years later on 4 August 1944. One of her first entries begins:

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. (p. 6, 20 June 1942)

One can scarcely see a trace of trepidation in her diary, which is written in a confident and assured tone despite both her age and the horrific situation in which she found herself. It is humbling to read of her continual devotion to learning

I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but...it remains to be seen whether I really have talent. (p. 250, 5 April 1944)

You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. We'll have to wait and see if these grand illusions (or delusions!) will ever come true, but up to now I've had no lack of topics. In any case, after the war I'd like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. It remains to be seen whether I'll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis. (pp. 295-6, 11 May 1944)

despite the knowledge of the fate that hung oppressively over their heads:

Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews. [...] If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed. Perhaps that's the quickest way to die. (p. 54, 9 October 1942)

After considering all of her words--haunting and harrowing by turns--I keep coming back to this observation:

It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. (p. 333, 15 July 1944)

Youth can sometimes express the wisdom of the ages.