The Diary of a Young Girl: Difference between revisions

One of the most famous and memorable accounts of [[World War II]] and the Holocaust, '''''The Diary of a Young Girl''''' or ''Het Achterhuis'' in the original Dutch, was the title given to the edited version of the Diaries of Anne Frank (1929 - 1945), a Dutch Jewish school girl living in Amsterdam. In 1942, Anne was given a diary notebook for her 13th birthday which is when the diary starts, by that point, [[Nazi Germany|Germany has already invaded]] and occupied the Netherlands for 2two years. At first, the Franks tried to live out the occupation, but as [[Adolf Hitler]]'s genocidal intentions began to show, Anne's father Otto built a secret shelter in the business building where he worked (by that point, the borders are closed and travel for Jews is so tightly regulated that leaving Amsterdam would have been impossible). On 6 July 1942, Anne's sister Margot received relocations orders to enter a "[[Blatant Lies|work]]" camp, and the Franks, along with van Pels family and another Jewish friend immediately moved into the Secret Annex (as it was called).

The rest of the diary chronicles the next 2two years of Anne's life in the cramped Annex along with her 7seven co-fugitives. The daily routine consisted of absolute silence during the day, since the business was still running below them, blissfully unaware. And relatively more freedom (but they still were not allowed to leave the building) during the night. Their only contact with the outside was a contraband radio and a few co-conspirators who brought them the weekly supplies.

As human nature would dictate, locking 8eight people in half of a townhouse under such stressful situations meant that each of the occupants immediately proceeded to get on everyone else's nerves. The Diary abound with morbidly funny tales of the occupants arguing over rations, radio channels, people's cooking, and in one memorable story, a low scale campaign over bathroom privileges (note that any small mistake, like a toilet flushing at the wrong time, can get everyone killed).

The last entry in the Diary was written on August 1, 1944. 3Three days later, the Grüne Polizei stormed the Annex. Anne was sent to Auschwitz then Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in 1945, 5five months before the camp was liberated.

* [[Misery Lit]]: An archetypicalarchetypal oneexample.