“Had he heard
something after all and now wanted to check out this mysterious-looking
bookcase? It seemed so, since he kept
knocking, pulling, pushing and jerking on it.
I was so scared I nearly
fainted at the thought of this total stranger to discover our wonderful hiding
place. Just when I thought my days were numbered, we heard Mr. Kleiman’s voice
saying, “Open up, it’s me.”
The horror that grasps the conscience of the inhabitants of
the Secret Annex were of the chances of their vulnerable discovery, since had
they gone into hiding fearing of being captivated by the Nazis and then tormented
to death. ‘The young girl’, Anne writes the heart-throbbing incidences in her
dairy quoting out the days of her stay at hiding in her dearest ‘Kitty’ dating
from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. The dairy, ‘Kitty’ was gifted to Anne on
her 13th birthday by her parents Otto Pim Frank and Edith Frank, and
hence is the first entry on 12th of June. The dairy also glances of
the various phases of the emotional, social and physical changes that evolve of
a young girl growing into her mature self.
The Holocaust during the Second World War was the dreariest
slaughter of humans that would have occurred in this planet. It clearly
highlighted the divisions and discriminations that have since time immemorial
prevailed in this society of ours. Humans have been termed mundane and damnated
by their brother humans with the greatest of agony and wrath, which clearly
depicts how inhuman the creature has become. Anne, cites the plight of the Jews in the
following excepts from the entry dated October 9, 1932,
“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 are sending all the Jews....The people get almost nothing
to eat, much less to drink, as water is available only one hour a day and
there’s only one toilet and sink for several thousand people. Men and women
sleep in the same room, and women and children often have their heads
shaved....”
Anne reportedly quotes a number of times her altercations
with her parents, and wails of her mother unable to understand her growing
instinct and feelings of being independent and not be shouted upon rebuking her
of being wrong all day. The dairy also reveals of relationship with Peter van
Daan, who she would always comprehend of being her companion to curb off her
growing need for one whom could she talk to openly. The friendship gradually
converts to romanticism and would they spend most of their time upstairs
staring at the sky and stars all night.
The emotional being of a girl during her adolescence can
clearly be substantiated from the dairy, when on a number of occasions she
discloses of her state of despair and pain of being alone and no one able to
understand her growing self and the need to be left independent on her opinions
and views. She would always discuss of her fragile relationship with her mother
and the hatred that she contains for her. Gradually does she matures and
understands the difference that prevails between them. Later on, Anne writes of
a number of topics that a few of all ages can cite – Gender Inequality and
Religion. She dreams of the era when women would be treated the same as men,
and not be taken for granted as simply as house-keepers and producers of their
children. She also wishes her of becoming a journalist or a writer in future
falsifying the human testament of her being the house-keeper like her mother.
The hideout retains for such a long time because of the
numerous helpers of theirs – Mr. Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Ms. Miep Gies
and Elisabeth (Bep) Voskuijl whom she thanks in her dairy a number of occasions.
Anne befits through her writing the ill-fated Jews and their
sufferings during the war, the agony of a maturing girl child trapped in a
hideout devoid of the worldly pleasures and still rejoices of her dreams of the
day, would she be the same she had been and enjoy the nature to the fullest
whose importance has she discovered only after going into hiding. She also
suffocates of her relationship with the members of the Annex and her longing
need for a partner to fill the void that had engulfed all the happiness of her
life (which she later finds in Peter). The extrovert finally on 1 August, 1944
talks of the fight between her cheerful, easy-to-go personality and the
serious, thoughtful and sensible Anne whom does she wants to win.
The family is finally discovered on August 4, 1942 because
of an impetrator informing of their existence to the police and the eight
residents are finally sent to different concentration camps of which only Otto
Frank survives at the end of the war. Anne is believed to have been killed of
typhus that had spread of the epidemic that had struck at Bergen-Belsen, the
concentration camp where she and her sister Margot had been brought.
Though did Anne Frank die, but her diary would for long
spread the message of the Jewish girl eying for peace and harmony and would
forever remind us of the brave girl who fought not only the war, but also her
inner self to mature out into the better and self made ‘Anne Mary Frank’.
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