I finished reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl last week. This seems like something that should have been on my high school’s required curriculum, as it is for many schools today. Anne Frank’s diary is so important because it puts a human face on the Holocaust.

Anne received a diary as a gift for her 13^th birthday and she began writing in it almost immediately. For two years, Anne wrote detailed entries on her thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes, conflicts, sexuality, dreams, plans and faith.¹ During almost all of that two year period (1942-44) she lived with her parents, sister, and four other people in the upstairs sections of an office/warehouse in Amsterdam. These eight were in hiding because, of course, they were Jews in Nazi-occupied territory. For two years they could never leave their hiding place, never go outside and enjoy the fresh air, never see any friends or family they had left behind. They depended entirely upon the kindness of Gentiles who risked their own safety in helping the Franks and others like them.

Anne’s diary is an extraordinary account of a girl emerging into womanhood. She is honest about her dislike of her housemates, problems with her mother, and attraction to the one boy in hiding with them. And then, as the diary continues, she grows to see her own weakness and pride at work in these relationships.

With little else to do, Anne and her sister engage in nearly constant study during the two-year hiding period. They read classic literature and history, learn other languages, and study math. As her mind forms and grows, Anne discovers that she wants to be a great writer, to have an impact on the world. She writes:

“I’ve often been down in the dumps, but never desperate. I look upon our life in hiding as an interesting adventure, full of danger and romance, and every privation as an amusing addition to my diary. I’ve made up my mind to live a life different from other girls…What I’m experiencing here is a good beginning to an interesting life…I’m young and have many hidden qualities; I’m young and strong and living through a big adventure; I’m right in the middle of it and can’t spend all day complaining because it’s impossible to have any fun! I’m blessed with many things: happiness, a cheerful disposition and strength. Every day I feel myself maturing, I feel liberation drawing near, I feel the beauty of nature and the goodness of the people around me. Every day I think what a fascinating and amusing adventure this is! With all that, why should I despair?” (pp. 277-78)

The last entry for Anne’s diary is August 1, 1944. On August 4^th at around 10:30 a.m., the hiding place was discovered (due to an informant who has never been identified) and everyone in it was arrested by Karl Josef Silberbauer who was simply following orders, the great justification for much of the evil that is done in this world.²

All eight occupants of the hiding place were sent to concentration camps, and seven of the eight died in the next eight months. Otto Frank, Anne’s father is the only one who survived. Anne and her sister Margot died sometime in February or March, 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen camp. Starvation and typhus killed them. They were probably buried in a mass grave near the camp.

There are several reasons why Anne Frank’s diary is so important. First, it tells us what was lost, what the Nazis stole from this world during their reign of terror in the 30s and 40s. Second, because this kind of thing is still going on in our world (in Africa, parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere) it should remind us that evil never sleeps and that real people with minds, souls, hearts and dreams are being slaughtered wherever there is murder, genocide, even necessary war. Third, racial and ethnic hatred lives here in America. On our recent whitewater rafting trip, our guide told us about taking a group of young kids down the river not long ago who constantly told very offensive Jewish jokes. I urge you, readers, to have courage and don’t for a second put up with that kind of talk EVER, against any race, religious or ethnic group, etc., but in the name of Jesus expose it for the lie of the enemy it is!

The saddest part of this book for me was actually in the Forward. It says there that Anne’s diary was found in the hiding place strewn across the floor. When you read the diary and realize how much she loved it and leaned upon it, how much of her soul she invested in it…and then you picture her watching as it is dumped across the floor, just before she is led away to eight months of misery and then death without it… well, that’s what EVIL looks like, folks. And yet, it is a common, everyday sort of evil, isn’t it?

Which raises another reason to read this diary: To remember that evil is something very real, and that ordinary people who give in to it can do unspeakable things.

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¹ One final note: If you read the diary years ago, you probably read a much shorter version of it than exists today. I read “the Definitive Edition”, first published in English in 1995, which contains some of Anne’s writings that were deemed inappropriate earlier, such as critical words about people in the hiding place and her thoughts on her own sexuality. I highly recommend this later version as it completes and humanizes Anne Frank, showing even more clearly how much like all of us she was.

² Silberbauer served a mere 14 months in prison for his wartime activities, and was reinstated as a police officer in his native Vienna in 1954. When he was identified in 1963 by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Otto Frank was remarkably forgiving of him, saying that the betrayer was the real culprit. Silberbauer’s superior who sent him on the raid committed suicide after the war. Silberbauer lived to the healthy age of 72.