The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)

In June 1942, 13-year-old Anne Frank started keeping a diary.  A month later, as a Jew living in Amsterdam during WWII, she and her family were forced into hiding to avoid deportation.  They lived in a secret annexe above an office building with four other people, where they successfully remained unnoticed until August 1944, when the SS discovered and arrested them and their helpers.  Anne wrote faithfully in her diary until the arrest.  Broken up and taken to different concentration camps in Germany and/or Poland, Anne and everyone in the annexe (except her father, Otto) died before the end of the war, either from gas or Typhus.  After the conflict, Otto returned to Amsterdam, where a friend had found Anne's diary and gave it to him.  As Anne states several times in the diary, she wanted to be a famous writer and 'live forever' through her work; her father published her chronicles as The Diary of a Young Girl and she got her wish.

Anne's diary is world-renowned; like me, you probably read (at least portions of) it in high school.  It's impressively well-written considering the age of the author, and it's a valuable glimpse into the life of secrecy and hardship forced upon so many during that dreadful conflict.  It's also a portrait of a young girl in her formative years, and the struggles she endures (dealing with parents, relationships, and maturation) are something with which we can all identify.  Interestingly, I felt it dealt much more with these subjects than things related to the war- Anne is remarkably good-natured about her situation, and we don't get a lot of griping (like I suspected).  Instead, her account is mostly upbeat, and they make the best of what they have.  They continued their education, receiving books from their helpers, and they focused on biding the time the best they could.  It's a worthy read, made more poignant knowing Anne's fate- had she survived the war, I wonder if this would have achieved such a high level of fame.

I'll end with a quote from a poem Otto composed for Anne on her birthday while in hiding:

One's own shortcomings are nothing but fluff,
But everyone else's are heavier stuff.

Much of Anne's diary concerns relationships, and the strain living in close confines can have on them.  I feel you can summarize them from the above line- people tend to focus on the failings of others and not their own.  It's interesting to me that, in the middle of WWII, that's what people were focused on- the day-to-day tense interactions, and not the broader situation.

Rating: A