Anne Frank Video Released

 The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam has released a rare video shot of Anne Frank during a neighbor's wedding that took place at the house next door. As the video pans the street scene it advances up to the window of Anne's house where she is observing the activities from above. It is the only known footage of her to exist.

As a young, impressionable girl of thirteen (in 1984) and in the 7^th grade, I was assigned to read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and to write a book report on it. I had heard very little at that point in my life on the history of World War II. I basically knew that it involved Germany and Hitler and that it had something to do with their dislike of Jewish people. At the time, I myself, did not know any Jewish people but I figured they couldn’t be much different from anyone else.

So I set about my task of reading the novel adapted from a diary written by a young Jewish girl named Anne Frank. Anne Frank was my age and so I was very interested from the start having just finished Judy Blume’s ‘Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret’ . I knew almost from the start that this was an entirely different kind of book from Blume’s. This was my first time to read a book that was actually true. It was written by a girl who had gone through some very hard times and eventually died a horrible death after sucumbing to Typhus before her fifteenth birthday.

I absorbed the pages as quickly as I could and finished it completely within two days. I remember crying as I wrote my book report. I had always been in love with history to an extent, but it was more so a love of American History, such as cowboys and Indians. This novel was my first glimpse of the harsh realities of the outside world. I did not like what I saw. The injustice of her situation, the pain and the hardship her family and millions of others were forced to endure. But I was inspired by Frank’s ability to tell her story and clearly remember that instant as being the first time I ever aspired to be a writer.

I often wonder if Anne Frank had any idea what her diary would accomplish in the world. Now, 25 years after having read the book, I still think of her and her story on occasion. I watched Schindler’s List a while back and remember thinking it was to bad Anne Frank was not on that list. I would have liked to have met her. I would have liked to have seen her as a survivor of the atrocities committed against the Jews. She would have grown up, gotten married, had children, perhaps written other novels. But then I think, maybe not. Perhaps if her situation had not been what it was her diary would never have become known.

This makes me sad, while at the same time it reminds me that everything has a purpose. I am sure Anne had no idea what her purpose was, but we know now that she was meant to humanize the crimes against the Jews and to bring about an understanding and an empathy in people and children throughout the world who have had the opportunity to read her words. If I could have met her I would have embraced her and kissed her cheek and told her ‘Thank you’.

The reality of Anne Frank is that she hid in a wall for over two years to escape capture from German soldiers. She was captured in August of 1944 and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau on September 3rd, 1944. She was then sent to a concentration camp called Bergen Belsen in October of 1944, where she died with her sister Margot of Typhoid Fever in March 1945, just a few short weeks before the camp was liberated. Her mother was captured at the same time she was with the eight people in hiding and sent to Auschwitz as well, where she was left to die. All of the eight people in hiding except her father dies as a result of their imprisonment and the harsh conditions they were forced to endure. Her father lived and returned to the house with the annex that had kept them hidden for so long. There he was given Anne's diaries and notes by one of the helpers who had assisted in the eight staying hidden for so long and decided to fulfill his daughter's wish of publishing a novel about her life there. Anne Frank was 14 when she died. Her sister Margot was 17.