Anne Frank: the Diary Written in Hiding
Anne Frank received a red-and-white checked autograph book for her thirteenth birthday, on 12 June 1942, in Amsterdam. Three weeks later her family went into hiding in the rooms behind her father’s business — the Secret Annex — and the book became the place where she lived her inner life for the next two years.
She wrote her entries as letters to an imagined friend, Kitty. In March 1944 she heard a radio broadcast from the Dutch government in exile asking people to keep their wartime diaries and letters, so that the occupation could be documented after the war. From then on Anne began rewriting her diary with a future book in mind, while still keeping the original.
On 4 August 1944 the people in the Annex were arrested. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen camp in early 1945. Her papers were saved by Miep Gies, one of the helpers, and given to her father, Otto Frank, the only one of the eight who survived. He published the diary in 1947.
What it teaches. Anne wrote first for herself and only later for readers — and the two diaries are different documents. Writing for yourself is a different act from writing for anyone else, and both deserve their own space.
An essay by the TAEONIA editors. Quotations are limited to texts in the public domain.
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