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The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank & Eleanor Roosevelt

Published: July 1993.

Publisher: Bantam Books, UK.

Author: Anne Frank.

Literary Awards: Luisterboek Award Mass Market Paperback, US/CAN Edition, 283 pages.

 

Reviewed by Siti Debitha Dawinda, SK Togop Darat Ranau.

This book in its initial form was a diary owned by a young 13-year-old girl, Anne Frank who penned her two years in hiding from the Nazis. She and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding in 1942 as the Nazis occupy Holland. For two years, the Franks had to live cloistered and discreetly in the hideout, Secret Annexe, alongside with another family. Their whereabouts was then unfortunately disclosed by the Gestapo. They faced hunger, boredom, confinement, deprivation, anguish, oppression and all sorts of emotions in their tiny bolthole. This book mainly revolved around the life of a 13-year-old girl in which she was the protagonist in her own diary.

Anneliese Marie, or Anne was born of a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany on 1929. Not too long after that, the first anti-Jewish laws were established once Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. Concerned about their wellbeing as Jewish, the Franks decided to move to Netherlands. There, although they were distance away from Nazis occupation, Jews were treated and degraded as second rate communities and faced tyranny in every aspects. Jewish children were to attend schools of their own and not to mingle with other kids of different races. They were enforced by Nazis to wear a yellow star as a mean to differentiate between Jews and non-Jews. Anne also deemed that the yellow stars stripped them off of their own identity to nothing more than just a community or part of the yellow star group.

Anne received the diary for her 13th birthday party on June, 1942 in which she decided to start on her writing journey. They went into hiding the next day her older sister, Margot received a call-up notice to report for deportation to a forced-labour camp on July, the same year. Anne expressed all her emotions and her perceptions on the ongoing war through the tip of her pen where her diary was the platform. Through her diary, it was clear that Anne was a mature young lady growing up in difficult circumstances despite her very young age. She showed critical evaluation on the adult conversation and yet she was still a teenager who found it very hard dealing with her emotions on certain things especially the affection she felt for one of the boys living in hiding with them. Due to the nature of youngsters her age who despised being in a grounded environment, she often got involved in a heated conversation with her mother and the other residents of the Annexe.

Her diary gives us a full tour on her everchanging ride of emotions and her close to non-existence social life. It also gives us the thrill and their desperate yearning to have a better closure on the ongoing war- how they are hoping the war would end and eventually the oppression on Jewish community would get lifted. This book is totally worth reading as it teaches us, generation who had experienced independence since birth, to be more appreciative of our country and to never looked down on any threat that would jeopardize our nation’s peace.

 

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