Summary of the book the dairy of a young girl by Anne
Frank
The Diary of a Young Girlis a book of the journaled writings of Anne Frank, a young
Jewish girl who went into hiding with her family (The Franks--Otto, her father; Edith, her
mother; and Margot, her older sister), the Van Daan family (Hermann, Otto's business
partner; Auguste, his wife; and Peter, their son), and a dentist, Mr. Dussel (whose real
name was Fritz Pfeffer) in a secret annex in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
When Anne Frank was thirteen years old in 1942 she began keeping a diary. Written for
herself alone, it described in explicit detail her thoughts and feelings during the two
years that she was confined with seven other people in which she called the “Secret
Annex.” Eventually, they were all arrested, and Anne, her sister, and her mother
perished in German concentration camps. After the war, Anne’s father edited and
published an abridged version of her diary which omitted comments about her growing
sexual awareness, as well as her critical remarks about her mother and others who
shared her hiding place. This version was also adapted to a popular play and a film.
Although Anne’s diary has often been recommended on high school reading lists,
parents have complained to school boards in such states as West Virginia in 1982 and
in Alabama in 1983, condemning the contents as overly sexually explicit or depressing.
An unabridged, definitive edition, retranslated and published in 1995, has restored all of
Anne Frank’s original entries and contains nearly 30 percent more material.
Anne Frank’s diary has made her the best-known Jewish victim of the Nazis. The diary
has given a human voice to the unfathomable horrors of the Holocaust. Her story of
hiding in a secret annex for more than two years vividly describes a life that most
readers could not imagine on their own. Above all, Frank comes through as a real and
authentic girl, who in spite of her difficult situation writes about the concerns typical of
any teenager. Knowing that she later died in a concentration camp, readers have a
chance to mourn one of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
My sources:
https://www.enotes.com/topics/diary-young-girl
https://www.shmoop.com/diary-of-anne-frank/summary.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl