At once a testimony to
human frailty and to human courage, it speaks of the will to survive against all odds and a refusal to surrender in the face of adversity. But it is an immensely sad tale, and at the end one is left wishing that somehow the author had lived to tell it herself. It is also a story of
sacrifice, of sacrifice nobly borne, of sacrifice with hope (in the form of liberation by the Allied forces) but without the certainty of redemption. Hope and despair alternate by turns, but hope is by far the stronger and her spirit remains unbroken throughout the two-year ordeal.
Ironically, perhaps, the book lived while its author died, only because the Gestapo (when they arrested the members of the Frank
family) did not consider it of any possible worth or value to them. Thus the book, and what it represents, not only outlived them physically but also in the world of ideas as a memento to the
war. Among the forces that have
helped to shape Post-war Europe, the book has been a contributing factor as it has helped to raise popular consciousness about the banality of evil and the horrors of war. It also helped to spawn a joint determination by the Europeans that these horrors must never again be repeated.
The story, or what little there is of it, is not only about Anne Frank and the members of her immediate family as they go into hiding (in the “Secret” Annex) to avoid capture and detention, it is also the story of their friends and even complete strangers who risked their own lives and livelihood to provide physical and moral support to them. Their trust in the human spirit alternates with their fear of being betrayed, of vulnerability, of not knowing who to trust and who not to. Sadly, though Anne and her family were betrayed in the end, we still do not know why or by whom – such is the atmosphere spawned by war for it dehumanizes us all in some way or the other. It is also the story of her confinement, and of life in closed quarters where even taking a breath of fresh air is a calculated risk involving both life and death. It is almost as if the freedom of a nation and a people has been placed in confinement, only to emerge triumphant after the conclusion of the conflict.
Anne Frank’s book has a universal appeal because she writes not as a Jew, a woman or a growing adult, but first and foremost as a human being. Her
concerns are not confined to her race, her sex or her age-group, but her concerns are universal for they are the concerns of the oppressed as they
fight against the yoke of oppression. Her fight is at once the fight of an individual but also the fight of a people as they struggle for their rights and for their freedom.
More reviews about the The Diary of a Young Girl