Publisher's Synopsis
*Includes quotes from Anne Frank's diary about life, love, religion, persecution, and more.
*Includes pictures of important people and places in Anne Frank's life.
*Includes a Bibliography for further reading.
Anne Frank is one of the most famous individuals of the 20th century for the worst possible reason. Joseph Stalin is often quoted as saying one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic, and while plenty of people might argue with the sentiment expressed, there's no question that Anne Frank in many ways became the face of the Holocaust.
Among the millions of victims killed in the Holocaust, there were certainly a countless number of 15 year old Jewish girls who lost their mothers, their sisters, and their own lives in Nazi concentration camps. While they were destined to become a footnote of history for anyone outside of their loved ones, Anne Frank has indeed gone on living after death thanks to the diary she kept during World War II and the year she and her family spent hiding from the occupying Nazi forces in Amsterdam. Given the journal as a 13th birthday present, Anne dutifully wrote in it from June 1942-August 1944, with the last entry coming just a few days before her family was arrested. Anne and her sister Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where both young girls died of typhus just a month before the war in Europe would end.
Anne's father Otto managed to survive at Auschwitz and made his way back to Amsterdam after the war, only to learn that his wife and two young daughters had died at Bergen-Belsen. Upon his return, however, one of the men who had helped the Frank family hide gave Otto his daughter's diary and notes, greatly surprising the father who had not realized how perceptive his young daughter had been.
Once Otto had it published, Anne Frank's diary became one of the best known and critically acclaimed works of the 20th century. During the two years Anne had kept a diary, her entries covered every aspect of a typical teenage girl's life, but set against the unforgiving reality of Nazi occupation and her family's attempt to hide. The diary vividly portrays the thoughts of an innocent girl who is well aware of her surroundings, even as she struggles to come to grips with them, and yet she manages to convey an eternal optimism and belief in the good of mankind. In addition to providing an important firsthand account of a critical period of history, the diary entries are both devastating and uplifting, often at the same time. As Dutch historian Jan Romein noted about the diary in the immediate aftermath of World War II, "This apparently inconsequential diary by a child, this 'de profundis' stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence of Nuremberg put together."
A Young Girl and Her Diary: The Life and Legacy of Anne Frank chronicles Anne's short life and tragic fate, but it also celebrates her writings and enduring legacy. Along with pictures of important people and places, you will learn about Anne Frank like you never have before, in no time at all.
