"The Diary of A Young Girl (Anne Frank)" by Anne Frank
My teacher made me read it, and the creepy part is that I read it when I was the exact same age as Anne Frank was while writing it. This book made such a tremendous impact on me that I could never read it again -- it's too chilling. I can't read it, especially the last parts, without crying.
It's the true story of what it was like for Anne, a Jewish teen, and her family to go into hiding inside a secret attic of another family to save their lives in WWII. They can never come out, or they'll be arrested by the Nazis for no other reason than that they're Jews. All they hear is the news on the radio of the war. They stay in hiding for more than a year. Then the Nazis find them and send them off to concentration camps, where they're all killed except for her father, who survives long enough to be rescued by allied forces. He finds her diary later and published it.
Years later, I went to Amsterdam and saw the house, now a museum, where they were in hiding. It's unbelievable because you cannot imagine that such terrible things happened right there, in the middle of the city. It brings more reality to the past.
Anne is completely honest, and you cannot read it without feeling moved at her dreams. She keeps thinking they'll be ok and writes about how no one could be so evil as to kill others just because of their background. She does her best to see the good in everything, even while they are living like hostages and are actually about to die.
People need to read this to understand that no one really wins in any war, to understand the dangers of belief systems that classify some people as "less than" others, and to remember our common humanity.
As a third generation survivor I have never been able to read the book. I have it at home and I can't touch it. I've been to the house, I know the story, but I can't bring myself to read it. Thank you for your entry!
I appreciate you saying that. Thank you.
Followed you, and I look forward to more fun book discussions in the future!
This is also one of my faves. read this book when i was in 9th grade and I love how Anne expressed her feelings through the diary. I cried in the end tho :(