The Secret Annex: A book review.

This is a book review about The Diary of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was a 13 year old Jewish girl who had to go live in hiding with her family and another family for two years in the Nazi occupied Netherlands (Holland). They had to live in hiding because all the Jewish were being arrested and sent to concentration camps where they were killed or forced to do hard labor. The two families have lived in a warehouse annex that Anne has called in her diary The Secret Annex. They have lived there from 1942 until they were captured in 1944 and sent to different concentration camps. Anne’s Father Otto Frank was the only survivor and Anne had died in a concentration camp with her sister Margot in 1945.
“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 girl.”
Her diaries have survived throughout history and Anne Frank has become an item of freedom and hope. Anne started writing in her diaries before they went into hiding in 1942 and continued until 1944 and that was the time they were captured.

In her diaries Anne talks about her feelings of hope and despair at the same time, her struggle to survive life in hiding and her longing for freedom. She also talks about her relationship with her family and how she can’t seem to fit in. she named her diary Kitty and addressed all her writing as a letter starting with ”Dear Kitty”, she thought that no matter how many friends you have who are willing to listen, “paper has more patience than people.”
As you read her diaries you will notice how her character has grown in the two years she has lived in hiding, she turned from being a confused nagging girl into an individual woman who understand herself and her dreams. She was self-aware and mentally mature you can sense it in her writing. Each written word rang with truth.
Her father was a great impact in her diaries, she saw him as her role model and hero but as the time passed in the annex Anne started to grow up mentally and grow out of her dependency, she thought she can only be her own savior, and that was very mature for her age.
“Both now and in the future, I’ll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it’ll make me stronger in the end.”
“Who else but me can I turn to for comfort?”
I loved reading her diaries, it felt like she was here next to me telling me the stories herself; she was passionate in talking about her emotional experience and her love of writing and dreams. I couldn’t help feeling sentimental at the end of the diary. I felt heartbroken that she didn’t get to witness the freedom and the civilization her world has achieved, even though she was a big part of it through her diaries.
“I simply can’t imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk about “after the war”, but it’s as if I were talking about a castle in the air, something that can never come true.”
Since I’m very obsessive of reading anything set in WWII, reading actual diaries of actual events has given another picture to see the war from an individual’s perspective.
In the diaries Anne discusses politics and she talked about how Jews were oppressed during the Nazi occupation “Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use streetcars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to go to theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools..”
Reading about the Nazi ideology and racism from a historical perspective and reading it from and actual innocent individual’s perspective is completely different. It’s another side of the story.
“Things are only as bad as you make them.”
“Where there’s hope, there’s life.”
She had made me understand that freedom is really important, an innocent girl of 13 years old growing up to 15 years old in a hiding place was forbidden to live. She kept reminding me how important it is to be free and that she had to go through struggle and pain to realize its importance. Not only the freedom of choice but even the freedom of being able to breathe in the fresh air, see the sky, and feel the sunlight.
