 |
| Anne Frank |
Some days ago, a horrible anti-Semitic attack happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 11 worshippers were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue. The Grandma was shocked thinking about how is possible to happen something like this in the 21th century.
Lately, terrible things like antisemitism, homophobia, and xenophobia are rising up without control. They are clear symptoms of an emergent fascism that is growing more and more taking advantage of the economic crisis, the globalization, the intolerance, the ignorance and the corruption of the political class. Hungary, Poland, The USA, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia... the list of emergent fascism seems to not finish and this is a terrible problem that we must fight against, control and erase before it was too late.
We must learn from our History and we have recent events to remember, to never forget and, the most import, to not repeat again, like the WWII, a terrible moment in our history that left sad stories to read, reread and explain to all the present and future generations, stories like Anne Frank's life.
More information: Anne Frank
Annelies Marie Frank (12 June 1929-February or March 1945) was a German-born diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, The Secret Annex in English, in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
 |
| Anne Frank |
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. Born a German national, she lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless.
The Franks
were liberal Jews, and did not observe all of the customs and traditions
of Judaism. They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and
non-Jewish citizens of various religions.
Edith was the more devout
parent, while Otto was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an
extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.
In 1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with Edith's mother Rosa in Aachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to arrange accommodations for his family. He began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam.
More information: History Hit
By February 1934, Edith and the children had joined him in
Amsterdam. The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between
1933 and 1939.
After
moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot Frank were enrolled in school,
Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Margot
demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading
and writing. Anne's friend, Hanneli Goslar, later recalled that from
early childhood, Frank frequently wrote, although she shielded her work
with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing.
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States, the only destination that seemed to him to be viable, but Frank's application for a visa was never processed, due to circumstances such as the closing of the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam and the loss of all the paperwork there, including the visa application.
More information: Vintag
Even if it had been processed, the U.S. government at the time was
concerned that people with close relatives still in Germany could be
blackmailed into becoming Nazi spies.
 |
| Anne Frank |
By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked.
From then until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a birthday present, and wrote in it regularly. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps.
For
her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Frank received a book she had
shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an
autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a
small lock on the front, Frank decided she would use it as a diary, and
she began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June
1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of the
Dutch Jewish population.
More information: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
On 3 September 1944, the
group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork
to the Auschwitz concentration camp and arrived after a three-day
journey.
On 28 October,
selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than
8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank, and Auguste van Pels, were
transported. Edith Frank was left behind and died from starvation.
Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of
prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease
increased rapidly.
October, 30 1944. Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died, probably of typhus, a few months later. They were originally estimated by the Red Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as their official date of death, but research by the Anne Frank House in 2015 suggests they more likely died in February.
More information: BBC
Otto, the only survivor of the Franks, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947.
 |
| Anne Frank |
It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 60 languages.
In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding.
In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter.
More information: Anne Frank
He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, For me it was a revelation ... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings ... She had kept all these feelings to herself. Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.
Frank's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts; she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognize her ambition to write fiction for publication.
In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein, a member of the Dutch government in exile, based in London, who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Frank decided to submit her work when the time came.
More information: The Guardian I & II
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait
a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
No comments:
Post a Comment