For my non-fiction book I chose to read "The Diary of a Young Girl--Anne Frank." Anne Frank was a little Jewish girl who lived during the Holocaust. She started her journal June 12, 1942. By July 10th her family had moved to a very small secret annex in Anne's Father's workshop. It was strange to read this book and comprehend that everything that she talked about actually happened. Many times Anne would act as a child. Running to her parents bed when gun shots and bombings could be heard. But who could blame her? She was thirteen years old. But surprisingly, she also many times acted as an adult. She was a very stubborn person and maybe that is what made her stand up to the adults in the little annex. I cannot imagine living at a time of such horror. The saddest parts of this diary were when Anne learned of what happened to her Jewish friends and neighbors. And when she learned about the gas chambers. "Perhaps that's the quickest way to die."
Another thing that became obvious to me, as time went on in her journal, was that I could see that Anne was maturing. "As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more." She said these words when she was falling in love with Peter, one of the Van Daans, who was also in the safe annex.
On Tuesday, August 1, 1944 Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry. Three days later the eight people living in the Annex were arrested along with two of their helpers. Hermann was gassed to death shortly before the gas chambers were dismantled. Peter was forced to take part in the death march were he died three days before the camp was liberated. Margot and Anne died the winter the typhus epidemic broke out within days of each other. First Margot, then Anne. That spring the camp was liberated. "The bodies of both girls were probably dumped in Bergen-Belson's mass graves." "Otto Frank was the only one of the eight to survive the concentration camps." "...he devoted himself to sharing the message of his daughter's diary with people all over the world."
All of them were so close to surviving, it's truly heartbreaking. Anne Frank is a legend. And through words and stories her legend lives on.
