THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK IS ''A MONUMENT TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT''
One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank. Edited by her father Otto H. Frank and German novelist Mirjam Pressler, this is a true story to be rediscovered by each new generation.
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12th July 1944:
''It''s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. 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.''
In the summer of 1942, fleeing the horrors of the Nazi occupation, Anne Frank and her family were forced into hiding in the back of an Amsterdam warehouse.
Aged thirteen, Anne kept a diary of her time in the secret annexe. She movingly revealed how the eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with hunger, the daily threat of discovery and death and isolation from the outside world.
A thought-provoking record of tension and struggle, adolescence and confinement, anger and heartbreak, the diary of Anne Frank is a testament to the atrocities of the past and a promise they will never be forgotten.
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''One of the greatest books of the century'' Guardian
''Rings down the decades as the most moving testament to the persecution of innocence'' Daily Mail
''Astonishing and excruciating. Its gnaws at us still'' New York Times Book Review
A beloved classic since its initial publication in 1947, this vivid, insightful journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945. Born in 1929, Anne Frank received a blank diary on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Her marvelously detailed, engagingly personal entries chronicle 25 trying months of claustrophobic, quarrelsome intimacy with her parents, sister, a second family, and a middle-aged dentist who has little tolerance for Anne's vivacity. The diary's universal appeal stems from its riveting blend of the grubby particulars of life during wartime (scant, bad food; shabby, outgrown clothes that can't be replaced; constant fear of discovery) and candid discussion of emotions familiar to every adolescent (everyone criticizes me, no one sees my real nature, when will I be loved?). Yet Frank was no ordinary teen: the later entries reveal a sense of compassion and a spiritual depth remarkable in a girl barely 15. Her death epitomizes the madness of the Holocaust, but for the millions who meet Anne through her diary, it is also a very individual loss. --Wendy Smith