A Monumental Birthday

Posted by Miss Cellania in Book & Lit on June 12, 2008 at 10:38 am


On June 12th, 1942, a young girl in the Netherlands named Anne Frank turned 13 years old. She received a cloth-bound blank book that she had requested for a birthday gift. Anne intended to use it for a diary, although she didn’t think anyone would ever be interested in reading it.

For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later I, nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.

Anne wrote about her life and how she and her family went into hiding in 1940 to avoid the Nazi death camps.

The little autograph book/diary that Anne had received less than a month before going into hiding, became a mirror into the soul of the teenager. As the world around her was increasingly crumbling, she began to pour out her heart and soul in her diary. She also used several other notebooks and individual pieces of paper when the book was filled.

The entries in her diary record the thoughts of the girl. She records the growing tensions in their hideout, and even despises her mother, although later she chastises herself for having such thoughts. She records her first kiss, from a 16-year-old boy whose family was in the hideout with them, but then squelches any possible romance. All in all, she records the ups and downs of budding womanhood, under the most adverse of situations.

She continued to write until their hiding place was discovered in 1944. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father found the diary after the war was over. Millions of people have been touched by Anne’s writing in the years since. Anne Frank would have turned 79 today. Link -via the Presurfer


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16 comments to "A Monumental Birthday"

  1. Confused
    June 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Wouldnt that make her 79 if she was 13 in 1942 and its been 66 years since then?

  2. Miss Cellania
    June 12th, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Duh. I'm suffering from sleep deprivation today, and I are not a good mather. Thanks for catching that... fixed.

  3. Megan
    June 12th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    It's my birthday too! :)

  4. Miss Cellania
    June 12th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Happy Birthday, Megan!

  5. MoonCake
    June 12th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    good reminder, miss c. brings me back to my sophomore year in high school when i read anne frank's diary and my school put on the play.

  6. Bonnie
    June 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    It's hard to think that, given a normal life, chances are really good that Anne Frank would still be alive today.

  7. Johnny Cat
    June 12th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    I have to stop procrastinating, and read that book already.

  8. Mattie
    June 12th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    I remember reading her diary in 6th grade and hating it even then. I understand that it gives an interesting look into what it was like to be locked away and hiding from the Nazis, but just the same it was here DIARY. It had a lot of private thoughts in there about her period, touching another girl's breasts, etc. I felt very guilty reading it.

    I think that reading her diary was an invasion of privacy and her father could have done something other than publish his daughter's private life and thoughts for the world to read in order to commemorate her.

  9. redphone
    June 12th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    I have not read that book since I was 13 years old when my mother gave it to me as a gift on my birthday. It took me years to grasp why she would give me such a thing.

    I recall at the time when it ended so abruptly, I asked my mother what happened to her. She told me I needed to find that out for myself. Needless to say, many tears were shed at the library.

    I haven't re-read it since. And I've been resisting it. Although I've forgotten most of the details of the book, I don't want to let go of the memories of the feelings I had. My feelings as a 13 year old girl - Anne's contemporary.

  10. privacy
    June 13th, 2008 at 8:11 am

    @ Mattie

    If you were to look into some information about Anne Frank and her diary, you would find that towards the end of her stay in "het achterhuis" (the secret annex) Anne Frank started editing her diary with the intent of having it published. She did this after hearing a broadcast from the dutch government in exile, requesting diaries te chronicle the war.

    Anne Frank had always inspired to be a writer and this announcement led her to edit and rewrite large parts of her diary and giving it a title; Het Achterhuis. She also expressed the wish to others to have her diary published. After the war, her father; Otto Frank, was initially reluctant to publish it, mainly because of some of the things Anne wrote about her mother. After editing these out however, he decided to respect his daughter's wish and had the diary published under the title she intended.

    So there was really no better way for him to commemorate his daughter than by publishing her diary, thereby fulfilling her greatest wish.

  11. Max Power
    June 13th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    (It's fake, get over it)

  12. Sid Morrison
    June 13th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    Just a slight clarification ... Otto Frank did not find the diary after the war. Rather, after the Franks were arrested , it was found by Miep Gies, an Austrian woman living in the Netherlands who helped hide the Frank family. Gies (still alive, aged 99) hid the diary after the war and then gave it to Anne's father, the only survivor of the group.

    It's not a big distinction of course, but it helps defend against the Max Powers out there who claim the diary a fake initiated by Anne's father. If that were the case, ies and her husband had to be in on the "fraud" as well.

  13. ted
    June 14th, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Well, if you think about it, he did have the chance to expurgate any material he would have found objectionable, even after her editing of her own work.

  14. JC
    June 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    I agree with Mattie. I also believe it's fake, no matter who initiated this.

  15. Alecks
    June 14th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Ghost, ghost, I know you live within me
    I feel you as you fly
    In thunderclouds above the city
    Into one that I love

    With all that was left within me
    Until we tore in two
    Now wings and rings and there's so many
    Waiting here for you

    And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929
    With rings that wringed right around a socket
    Right between her spine
    All drenched in milk, in holy water
    Pouring from the sky
    I know that she will live forever
    She won't ever die

    And she goes
    And now she knows that she'll never be afraid
    To watch the morning paper blow
    Into a hole where no one can escape

    And one day in New York City, baby
    A girl fell from the sky
    From the top of a burning apartment building
    Fourteen stories high
    And when her spirit left her body
    How it split the sun
    I know that she will live forever
    All goes on and on

    And she goes
    And now she knows that she'll never be afraid
    To watch the moring paper blow
    Into a hole where no one can escape

  16. Katie
    January 21st, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    Anne Frank's diary is not a diary it's an autobiography She meant for it to be published Does anyone agree with me


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