Bearing Witness: Memories of Anne Frank

Memories of Anne Frank

I will never forget the first time I read the diary of Anne Frank.

I was about nine years old, and I had read about the remarkable Anne Frank in an issue of  American Girl magazine. What captured my attention about Anne was not just her vivid depictions of the terror around her, nor was it just her keen eye and incisive wit as she dissected the personalities around her. And it was more than just the fact that we shared a name that made it feel as though my nine-year-old self was so closely tied to her.

What completely and utterly absorbed me about Anne was that, in another life, she could have been an ordinary girl with an ordinary childhood and adolescence, like me. Perhaps she would have become the actress she once aspired to be, perhaps a writer or a sociologist. Perhaps she would have married Peter Van Pels, perhaps she would have lived in America and gone to Hollywood or become a journalist, as she dreamed of doing.

But, because of the horrors of the world around her, Anne Frank would never have those chances. She would remain behind to shine a light on the horror of war, and her light would both illuminate the human spirit and throw the shadows on its darkest depths.

My edition of Anne Frank had a school photograph of her on the cover. Even before deprivation starved her, Anne had thin little shoulders. They were the shoulders of one too small to carry the burden of history, but somehow they did.

Seventy years ago today, Anne and her family slipped into a space behind her father’s office building and entered their “Secret Annexe,” where they would hide for the next two and a half years. When the family was discovered and captured, the pages of Anne’s diary were scattered across the floor. It wasn’t until her father, Otto, returned after the war was over that the pages were retrieved. Intending to publish them as a private remembrance for friends and family, the diary went on to become a portrait of the horrors of war, and the triumph of the human spirit.

What would your diary say about the world around you? Would it be a straightforward accounting of life events and emotions, or would it be something more? Anne didn’t set out to become an icon of World War Two, but time and history conspired to make it so. There is a responsibility that implicitly comes with journal writing – it’s the responsibility to bear witness, to recognize the extraordinary in even the simplest of days.

Every word bears witness. Make them count.