Résumé :

Le 12 juin 1944, elle a 15 ans. Avant son seizième anniversaire, elle sera morte, assassinée par les Nazis. Mais, grâce à son journal, cette fille juive d’Amsterdam restera pour toujours une jeune fille comme les autres qui se sent incomprise, à la recherche de sa véritable identité.

12 JUNE 1942 – THE DIARY BEGINS

ne month before the family went into hiding, Anne began her diary. 12 JUNE 1942

" I hope I will be able to confide everything to you , as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support."

This speech could be ours. It’s both destabilizing and reassuring to know that everyone needs to confide himself.

She strikes up a friendship with her diary. 20 JUNE 1942

"Paper has more patience than people" … Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place : I don’t have a friend . … To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do , but I want the diary to be my friend and I’m going to call this friend Kitty ."

6 JULY 1942 – THE FRANK FAMILY IN HIDING

n July 1942 Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, hid in the back of an Amsterdam warehouse. Anne was thirteen when the family went into the Secret Annex and over the next two years, she vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such confined quarters, the constant threat of discovery, hunger and tiredness, and, above all, boredom.

24 JUNE 1942

"It’s sweltering . Everyone is huffing and puffing, and in this heat I have to walk everywhere Only now do I realize how pleasant a tram is, but we Jews are no longer allowed, to make use of this luxury; our own feet are good enough for us ."

9 OCTOBER 1942

"… Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves …. If it’s that bad in Holland , what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them ? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die. … Fine specimens of humanity , those Germans, and to think I’m actually one of them! No, that’s not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides , there are no greater enemies on earth than the Germans and the Jews."

She has the courage of her convictions … a quality which we envy her .

13 JANUARY 1943

"… I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the war has brought , but I’d only make myself more miserable. All we can do is wait , as calmly as possible, for it to end . Jews and Christians alike are waiting, the whole world is waiting, and many are waiting for death."

An outspokenness which touches us!

21 JULY 1944

"I’m finally getting optimistic. Now, at last , things are going well ! They really are ! Great news ! An assassination attempt has been made on Hitler’s life …."

Irony: how to calm down her excess of anger!

She didn’t leave her legacy as an ode to the past, but as a beacon of hope to the future

"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

4 AUGUST 1944 –THE ARREST

In August 4, 1944, between 10:00 and 10:30 am, a German car pulled up before 263 Prinsengracht with a German Officer, Karl Silberbauer, and several Dutch officials. They entered the warehouse, secured the building, and began a search that led to the bookcase that concealed the secret annex. The Franks had spent 2 years and 30 days in hiding, but now they were prisoners of the Gestapo .

3 SEPTEMBER 1944 – THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS

pon their arrest, the eight residents of the Annex were first taken to a prison in Amsterdam and then transferred to Westerbork, the transit camp for Jews in the north of Holland . They were deported on 3 September 1944, in the last transport to leave Westerbork, and arrived three days later in Auschwitz.

Anne Frank was the same age as us when she died.

Anne herself , in April 1945, succumbed to the disease of typhus a few weeks before the camp was liberated by the British. She was fifteen years old.

Only 15 years old. When we think about it, it is so horrible! And we have to know that since she was thirteen she had to live in a secret annex, and this life settled down to a monotonous routine and a hard routine. They all had to be quiet, whisper, walk barefoot and all movement was kept to an absolute minimum. It is not a normal life for a child to have; and the horror camps were not beautiful houses.

Moreover, in some books, it’s written that, even if she knew that she was going to die, Anne Frank was "happy" in the camps because she could ask people about her friends, her neighbours, all her life before the war, but she didn’t know that she was sick. Irma Sonnemberg Mentiel saw Anne die and she tells "Anne would say to me "Irma , I am very sick". I said "No , you are not sick". She wanted to be reassured that she wasn’t. "When she fell into a coma, I took her in my arms. She didn’t know that she was dying. She didn’t know that she was so sick".

She was only a teenager, and a lot of children and teenagers died as her. At 15 years old we can’t know what life is, and nobody knows this at 15; normally, at this age, people think about friends, games , love ...

But her, she died at 15 !!!

Though she never lived to see her 16^th birthday, Anne Frank’s most inner thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper challenge us, and shame us a full fifty years after her death. Her life serves as eulogy to the millions of children who perished in World War 2.

THE ROAD TO PUBLICATION

fter Mr Frank returned to Holland, Miep brought him Anne’s diary. He was deeply moved by his daughter’s writings. At first, he made a transcription of the key portions of the diary for circulation to family members, but soon the diary came to the attention of key publishers.

"We must remind ourselves that the Holocaust was not 6 million It was one , plus one , plus one …"

Judith Miller, journalist

It has made us aware of how precarious happiness is !!!

Angélique, Cécile, Elodie

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