Episode 364: 'The Diary of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank

Summary

Introduction

In Episode 364 of The Great Books podcast, hosted by John J. Miller of the National Review, the focus is on Anne Frank's seminal work, The Diary of a Young Girl. Joining Miller is renowned author Ruth Franklin, known for her comprehensive research on Anne Frank, including her latest book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, published by Yale University Press. The discussion delves deep into the enduring significance of Anne Frank's diary, its transformation from a personal journal to a historical memoir, and its lasting impact on readers worldwide.

Why The Diary of a Young Girl is a Great Book

Ruth Franklin opens the conversation by underscoring the universal acclaim of Anne Frank's diary. She states, “Probably, you know, just about everybody in the world would agree that The Diary of a Young Girl is a great book” (00:49). Franklin highlights the diary's extensive reach, having been translated into over 70 languages and selling more than 30 million copies. Its ability to resonate across diverse cultures and circumstances—from Eritrean refugees to anti-apartheid activists in South Africa—emphasizes its universal appeal and profound impact.

Diary or Memoir?

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the nature of Anne Frank's diary. Franklin clarifies that while the work presents itself as a diary, it also functions as a memoir. She explains, “The version that we read was actually edited not just by Otto Frank, Anne's father, but by Anne, her. She went back to the beginning...and rewrote it from the start” (03:18). This editing process transformed the diary from raw, day-to-day entries into a more cohesive narrative that provides deeper insights into the Holocaust's atrocities.

Life in the Secret Annex

The conversation then shifts to the living conditions within the Secret Annex, where Anne and her family hid from Nazi persecution. Franklin describes the annex as cramped and claustrophobic, housing eight people in a few small rooms. She notes the psychological strain of such confined living, stating, “It's a psychological study of human beings under extreme stress” (13:57). The annex's limited space, combined with constant fear of discovery, created a tense and challenging environment for its residents.

The Psychological Impact and Human Relations

Franklin delves into the psychological dynamics within the annex, highlighting how extreme stress affected interpersonal relationships. “We see Ann wondering the first year... she's wondering if she's going to be able to go back to school in the fall” (15:49). Anne's focus on maintaining her education amidst uncertainty underscores her resilience and desire for normalcy despite the dire circumstances.

Transformation of the Diary into a Memoir

A pivotal moment in the diary's evolution occurs in March 1944, when Anne realizes the historical significance of her writings. Upon hearing a Dutch minister's call for preserving personal documents, Anne is inspired to revise her diary entries to serve as a valuable historical record. Franklin recounts Anne’s proactive approach: “She writes... that it could be included in such a national archive” (18:14). This transformation elevated the diary from personal reflections to a crucial Holocaust testimony.

Final Entries and Anne's Fate

The final diary entry, dated August 1, 1944, leaves readers in suspense as Anne continues her philosophical musings without knowing her impending fate. Franklin explains, “It doesn't conclude because Anne didn't know that that was going to be her last entry” (23:34). Shortly after, the Nazis raid the annex, leading to the arrest and deportation of all its residents. Anne and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to Auschwitz and later to Bergen-Belsen, where they perished from typhus in early 1945.

Survival and Preservation of the Diary

Despite the destruction of the annex, Anne's diary survives thanks to the swift actions of the helpers, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. Franklin narrates how the Gestapo officer inadvertently discarded Anne's briefcase, allowing Miep to recover and preserve the invaluable manuscripts. “When it became clear that Anne had died, she gave them to Otto instead” (29:39). Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the annex's residents, played a crucial role in publishing the diary, ensuring Anne's voice would endure.

Anne Frank: The Real Person vs. the Icon

Franklin's book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, is discussed towards the end of the episode, where she distinguishes between the historical Anne Frank and her cultural iconography. “I found it amazing... the numerous, you know, uncountable ways in which Anne's face, her image, and her Persona are invoked by people” (32:46). Franklin emphasizes the importance of recognizing Anne's humanity and individuality beyond her symbolic representation, exploring how her story has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the decades.

Personal Connection and Enduring Relevance

Ruth Franklin shares her personal connection to Anne Frank, recalling how she received her first copy of the diary at eight years old and visiting the Anne Frank House as a child. This early exposure left a lasting impression, fueling her passion to explore Anne's life and legacy. Franklin concludes by affirming the diary's continued relevance in combating prejudice and anti-Semitism: “Our work is not over... the diary, to me, feels as relevant today as it ever has” (35:55).

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive exploration of The Diary of a Young Girl, highlighting its literary significance, historical importance, and emotional depth. Through Ruth Franklin’s expert insights, listeners gain a deeper understanding of Anne Frank's enduring legacy and the profound impact her diary continues to have on readers around the world. The discussion underscores the diary's role not only as a personal account but also as a powerful testament to the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.

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Note: All timestamps correspond to the points in the provided transcript.

Transcript

[Ruth Franklin]

Foreign.

[John J. Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Great Books Podcast. Today we'll talk about the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I'm your host, John J. Miller of National Review and you're listening to a production of National Review. Our guest is Ruth Franklin, author of the Many Lives of Anne Frank, published recently by Yale University Press. She's also the author of A Thousand Darknesses, Lies and Truth and Holocaust Fiction and the award winning Shirley Jackson, A Rather Haunted Life. She joins us by Zoom as we record from Hillsdale College's campus radio station, WRFH in Michigan. Ruth, welcome to the Great Books Podcast.

[Ruth Franklin]

Thanks so much for having me here.

[John J. Miller]

Why is the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank a great book?

[Ruth Franklin]

Well, you know, I feel like this is truly a softball question because probably, you know, just about everybody in the world would agree that the Diary of a Young Girl is a great book. You know, for so many people, this is the book that introduced them to the Holocaust in some way or another. You know, it's been it's imprint in more than 30 million copies and more than 70 languages. And one thing I noticed or you know, realized more than ever before while researching this book is that it is beloved by people around the world in all kinds of different, different countries, different nationalities, different ethnicities in all kinds of different situations. From, you know, and Eritrean refugee who read it in an Ethiopian refugee camp, to anti apartheid activists in prison in South Africa, to obviously all the people who have read it and loved it in America or saw the Broadway play. This book is universally beloved by people all around the world.

[John J. Miller]

We're going to talk about that. The story in the Diary of a Young Girl. It's remarkable girl, author, her secret hideaway place in Amsterdam. And why this book is so beloved, why does it endure? Ruth let's start though with the title. It's called the Diary of a Young Girl. And in one sense it is a diary, but also maybe, is it a. A memoir?

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right. This book is really actually both of those things. And I just, I want to say before I begin here, I'm in no way suggesting that the diary is fake. Absolutely. It is a real diary written by Anne Frank starting on her 13th birthday in June 1942 and continu all through the period that she spent in hiding with her family until August 1944. But the sense in which it is perhaps better described as a memoir is that many people don't realize that the version of the diary that we read, the version that was published in the Netherlands and Then in the United States, just a few years later, the version that we read was actually edited not just by Otto Frank, Anne's father, but by Anne, her. She went back to the beginning. With only a few months left in hiding, she returned to the beginning of her diary and rewrote it from the start.

[John J. Miller]

Now it presents itself as a diary. The first entry is dated June 12, 1942. And here it is in its entirety. Quote, I hope I will be able to confide everything to you as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support, Unquote. She's speaking to her diary, like, dear Diary, that's how the book comes to us. It certainly looks like a diary.

[Ruth Franklin]

Yeah. So it's interesting that you choose to start with that, because we know, actually, from a big scholarly edition that was published almost 40 years ago, it's called the Diary of Anne, the critical edition. And that book lays out Anne's work in great detail, showing which what was part of her original draft, and then the changes that she made in her edit, and then finally the changes that her father made before he edited it. And so those lines that you just read actually aren't from the very beginning of the diary. Those are. It's presented now as the beginning of the diary, but they're actually notes that she wrote to herself that she went back and was looking over her diary, and those are notes that she wrote later.

[John J. Miller]

The story begins, though biographically, with Ann receiving a blank diary as a birthday gift. Right?

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right. She gets the diary as a present for her 13th birthday. She's just. She's absolutely thrilled. She's already picked it out in a stationery store, and she's excited to have a diary for the first time.

[John J. Miller]

So she's a girl with a diary. It's June 1942. She's living in Amsterdam. The world is at war, of course. Berus, give us a quick sense of actually what's happening, the state of life for people in Amsterdam, for Jews in Amsterdam, what's exactly happening in Europe at that moment in June 1942.

[Ruth Franklin]

So Anne's family are actually. They're German Jewish refugees in Amsterdam. She was born in Frankfurt, which was where her father's family lived for generations. But after Hitler came to power in 1933, her parents, like many other Jews, decided that Germany was no longer safe for them, and they chose to emigrate to Amsterdam. She's been living there since she was age 4. She's grown up really identifying as Dutch, she writes her diary in Dutch, which is something many people don't know. But she's actually a refugee. She's technically stateless. Her family emigrated to the Netherlands believing that that would be a safe place. But in May 1940, Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands after less than a week of war. And so she's been living under German occupation now for almost two and a half years. And in the beginning it started slowly. The Jews actually believed for a little while that they would be safe. But pretty soon the Nazi regulations against Jews started mounting up. And at this point when she begins the diary, Jews lives are very restricted. She's not allowed to ride on the trams, to use public transportation, they are forbidden even to sit in public parks, they can't go to the movies, they are restricted to, you know, a few restaurants and cafes and of course many, many other restrictions. I'm mentioning those because those are the ones that Ann talks about. They're the ones that have the greatest impact on her life.

[John J. Miller]

And on her 13th birthday in 1942 when she gets this diary, she's not yet in hiding, she famous, goes into hiding. Her family does they have to, but they haven't gotten there quite yet when the diary begins.

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right. Her diary starts out really as a chronicle of ordinary life, just sort of touched in almost, you know, in some ways, some subtle, some, you know, more overt by the Nazi persecution. But she's living the life of a normal 13 year old girl. She's going to school, she has crushes on boys, she goes out to eat ice cream, she chronicles her birthday party. It all feels very ordinary.

[John J. Miller]

There's an entry on June 20, 1942. I don't know when this was written, but it comes fairly early in the diary. She says, quote, it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a 13 year old schoolgirl. Was that, do we know, is that a contemporaneous entry or is that something she wrote in later?

[Ruth Franklin]

You know, I'd have to double check but I'm pretty sure that that is something that she wrote in later. Because in general the tone of the rough draft of the diary in its original form is very, very different from the kind of mature, sophisticated Anne Frank that we all know. This is a voice, a writing voice and a writing Persona that she honed over the course of just over two years in hiding. But in the beginning she really is just an ordinary 13 year old girl going about her days.

[John J. Miller]

So what happened Then to the family what sent them into hiding and where did they go?

[Ruth Franklin]

So we know now that Otto Frank, Anne's father, was preparing to go into hiding for about a year, that he had an inkling, as did many Jews in Amsterdam, that the situation was going to get much more dangerous soon. And in fact, the Nazis began mass roundups of Jews beginning in July 1942. And so that was the trigger that spurred them to go into hiding overnight was that Anne's sister Margot, who is three years older, she was 16 years old, received a call up notice from the Nazis instructing her that she needed to report for what they called labor service in Germany. And of course this was a euphemism. We now know that what they called labor service was in fact deportation to Auschwitz. At the time, the Jews in Amsterdam didn't know that Auschwitz had really only just begun operating as the extermination camp that we know it as now. At that time, they didn't have any information about what was going on. They didn't even know its name, and they didn't know where the deportees were going to be sent, but they knew that it was bad. And so when this call up notice arrived for Margot, Otto, who had been, I believe, planning to take the family into hiding, you know, within a few weeks or months, decided, you know, that there was no time to lose and they immediately went into hiding. In the place that he had prepared, which was the back half of his office building, he had a business that produced pectin for homemade jam making. And it was in a lovely canal front townhouse, a tall, narrow house wedged in among other houses facing onto a canal in Amsterdam. And like many of these canal houses, the house had a back half that was connected to the front by a passageway and only one place. And Otto, for about a year, with the help of some friends, had been moving furniture and food and other supplies into the back half of this building, which we now know as the annex. Sometimes it's also called the secret annex.

[John J. Miller]

What was secret about it? How did they hide?

[Ruth Franklin]

So it was attached to the front of the building by only this one narrow passageway that was separated by a door. You opened the door and went up a very steep and narrow set of stairs and that was the access to the part of the building. After they were in hiding for a couple of months, the residents of the annex started to feel that this door wasn't quite enough security. So one of the helpers, actually the father of one of Otto's employees, a secretary named Bep, who was one of the closest friends of the family in those years and in fact Ann's closest confidant. Her father was a woodworker and he built a bookcase with a special hinge mechanism that could be used as a door to open up when the bookcase was closed. It just looked like any other bookcase with books on the wall, but that you could open it and access the stairs to the annex.

[John J. Miller]

How big was this annex? Was it comfortable for a family? Was it cramped? What was life like back there for them?

[Ruth Franklin]

It's small, you know, there's a famous satirical essay by David Sedaris where he visits the annex and compares it favorably to a New York City apartment. But you know, it's only somebody from New York City who would see the annex as spacious. There are only a few rooms on each level. They were the families. So the Franks shared it with another family, the Van Pelzes as well as a few months later they decided to add yet another person, a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer. So in the end there were eight of them. Five adults and three teenagers, Anne and Margo, and the Van Pelzes son Peter. So eight people crammed into a space of just a few rooms. The Van Pelzes had to share their bedroom with the kitchen area. During the day that was sort of a great room or living room where all the residents would hang out and the kitchen was also attached to it. But at night the Van Pelzes would sort of roll out their bed. Margot actually had to share a room with her parents, while Ann shared a bedroom with this dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, which she wasn't happy about at all. Like any teenage girl, she didn't enjoy sharing a bedroom with a middle aged man who snored loudly and wasn't very patient or tolerant with her.

[John J. Miller]

That does sound like a difficult living arrangement. I mean, just forget the horror of the Nazi persecution outside. Just putting that many people in such a small space, that must have just been difficult from a human relations standpoint.

[Ruth Franklin]

It was very difficult from a human relations standpoint. And part of what we see in the diary is that it's a psychological study of human beings under extreme stress. So remember that we know that they were in hiding for two years and about a month, but when they went into hiding, they didn't know how long they were going to have to stay there. I think that at first they thought it was just going to be a matter of a few months before the Nazis were defeated and the war would be over. Then as time went on they started extending their expectations. We see Ann wondering the first year, after the first year is completed, she's wondering if she's going to be able to go back to school in the fall. One of the themes of the diary is her keeping up with her schoolwork. Her father homeschooled her and Margo and Peter as well, so that when they did return to school, they wouldn't be behind. And I think that's one of the most poignant aspects of the diary for we who are reading it in the future who know that none of them is ever going to go back to school. But here they are worried about keeping up with their work. But yes, it was very cramped. It was dark because they had to keep blackout curtains up for much of the day. And when the office employees were working downstairs in the warehouse during the day, they weren't able to move around. They had to be very quiet because the office employees for Otto's business were aware that they were there. And not only aware, but very engaged and involved in helping them with food and other supplies and coming to visit to provide them with company. But the workers in the warehouse on the first floor of the building didn't know that there were Jews hiding there. So during the day they had to be very, very quiet.

[John J. Miller]

Did Ann or her family ever get to leave? Did they get to go outside and midnight stroll and breathe the fresh air only for a few minutes? Or are they always completely, all the time enclosed in the secret annex?

[Ruth Franklin]

Never. They never got to leave. Over the course of that entire two plus years, there's one episode in the diary where it's clear that Ann needs glasses. This is after they're about a year in and her parents consider whether one of the helpers might be able to take her under a false identity to an optometrist and get her glasses. And they actually consider this. But they decided the situation is still much too dangerous for Jews in Amsterdam. People are, at this point, people are being rounded up spontaneously on the street. You never knew when there might be a Nazi raid somewhere. And so they decided it's too dangerous for her to go out and get glasses. So no, none of them ever went outside. The best they could do, really, was to crack the attic window and get some fresh air that way, sometimes late at night when they were sure nobody was watching.

[John J. Miller]

You've already mentioned that you can visit the annex today. It's a popular museum in Amsterdam. I know you've been to it briefly. What is it like as a kind of tourist attraction? What do you see today, well, it's.

[Ruth Franklin]

A very, very popular tourist attraction. Tickets sell out weeks in advance and people line up outside. You know, they take pictures in front of the front door and post them on Instagram. It's a little surreal, course, you know, to see these. These masses of tourists around what used to be this extremely private and, you know, almost invisible place. It's the annex. When you visit it today, it's removed of furniture, so it's empty. I believe they did this so that they can fit a greater number of people in the rooms. It's very, very crowded and dark as well. The windows are covered. So it's a very sort of claustrophobic and unnerving experience to be there.

[John J. Miller]

So Anne is stuck in there with her family, also some others. She's scribbling away in her diary. At what point does the diary become a memoir? Or at least when does she become a memoirist? And what inspires that?

[Ruth Franklin]

So in March 1944, after they've been in hiding for nearly two years, the residents had a habit of. At night, they would listen to the news on the radio, the BBC, or the Dutch news station Radio au Ren, which broadcast clandestine news from the Dutch government in exile in England. And on this particular night, they hear a Dutch minister of the government calling on citizens to preserve their documents of the war years for inclusion in a future national archive. And he says, this is very important because he says, history can't be written on the basis of official documents alone. It's only through private papers like diaries and letters that our descendants will ever be able to fully understand what we experienced during these horrible years of Nazi occupation. And Ann writes in her diary that as soon as the residents heard that, they all made a beeline for her diary. They realized that she had just such a document. It was exactly what this man was calling for. And she was very excited by the idea that it could be included in such a national archive. She writes in the diary, wouldn't it be funny if 10 years from now, people were told what we Jews did and ate and talked about while we were in hiding? Which is, of course, exactly the contents of the diary. But it's clear that when she looked back on it, she realized that the diary as she had written it, this rough draft, couldn't serve this purpose. It couldn't be the kind of testimonial she wanted it to be, because, number one, it was too private and had all kinds of extraneous things, you know, that were important to her, but that wouldn't be useful to anybody who wanted to know what Jews ate and talked about and did while they were in hiding. And at the same time, it didn't have enough about the context. It didn't have enough about the actual Nazi persecution. So she went back to the beginning and rewrote it. She rewrote her initial entries to add important details about what was going on in the world around her. And she actually created new entries that filled in gaps with information that she hadn't put in before, again relating to that Nazi persecution.

[John J. Miller]

She received this inspiration, it's worth noting, before D Day. D day comes June 6, 1944. So she's weeks away from that. Was Ann, was her family. Were they thinking about liberation at this point?

[Ruth Franklin]

Yes, they were sort of constantly hoping that liberation was coming soon. But they followed the news very, very closely. They were extremely excited about D Day. Anne actually quotes Churchill in English in her diary when she's describing it. She believed at that point that the war was only a few months from its end and that she would be able to go back to school in the fall.

[John J. Miller]

So what are we to make then of this document? It starts out as a girl's diary, an authentic diary of a 13 year old girl writing about her school, writing about boys and so forth. And she goes back and she edits, she revises. Should we think of this as a diary, as an edited diary, a memoir? Exactly what category should we apply to this text?

[Ruth Franklin]

Well, again, I just want to reiterate that I don't feel that this editing in any way detracts from this book's authenticity as a Holocaust testimony. Not at all. But I think it's important for us to understand Anne's intentions. I think people have sometimes talked about the diary. There's one Dutch novelist who has literally called it a found object. They talk about it as if it was sort of this accidental document that somehow magically was written and found its way to the public. And I think the real story is both more complicated and more interesting. But what that found object version doesn't adequately convey is Anne's sense of agency and urgency and her need to tell her own story. You know, this diary wasn't published against her will. She absolutely wanted it to be a testimony that other people were going to read and learn from. And we can see that in just some of the little tweaks that she makes to her entries, including that one from March where she describes the minister's speech. And when I quoted her entry about it before I gave the original version where she says, wouldn't it be funny if people were told what we Jews did here? When she goes back and revises it, she writes something a little bit different, but in an important way. She writes, wouldn't it be funny if 10 years after the war, if we Jews were to tell what we did and ate and thought about here? I think that's such an important little distinction because she had realized that if the story of what happened to the Jews of the Netherland of the Netherlands during the war years was going to be properly told, it could only be told by the people who experienced it. They had to tell it in their own words.

[John J. Miller]

I want to get to what happened to Ann, but first, the final entry in the diary of a young girl is dated August 1, 1944. So the Allied invasion of Europe has taken place. What does that entry say? Does the text does just. It doesn't conclude. Does it just kind of stops?

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right, it doesn't conclude because Anne didn't know that that was going to be her last entry. You know, that takes place in the summer of 1944. She's writing for the first time in a kind of a more philosophical way. She's indulging in a lot of speculation about the universe, what it all means, about God. She writes about feminism. She's writing a little bit more about politics than she has when she was younger, but she has no idea that that's going to be her last entry.

[John J. Miller]

So then what happened? Part of the power of this book is the story that comes afterward. But what happened to Anne and her family after that final entry?

[Ruth Franklin]

So on August 4, the Nazis raided the annex. We don't know anything for certain about what triggered that raid. It's often said that there was. There was a call to Gestapo headquarters saying that there were Jews living in the annex. We don't even know that for sure. It's possible that, as researchers at the Anne Frank house have speculated, that the Gestapo got a tip that they were stolen goods at that address and just happened to find the Jews that were hiding there. But for whatever reason, on that morning, an SS officer and his team of policemen arrive at the annex. They discover the hiding place and they arrest everybody there, as well as a few of the office staff who had been helping them. Them. And so Anne and the other residents are. They're first taken to prison in Amsterdam, and then they're deported to Vesterbork, which was a transit camp for Dutch Jews in northeastern Holland. And that camp was its own kind of its own world, with its own community and systems and rules. It was a place where people largely lived peacefully. They had to do labor, of course, but it wasn't a concentration camp the way we think of Auschwitz or the other death camps. But every week, a train left from that camp, usually to Auschwitz, sometimes to the other more notorious camps. And so the residents waited in fear, waiting to know if their names were going to be called for that week's transport. And so that camp is where Ann and all the residents were taken. They were there for about a month, and then their names came up on what was actually going to be the very last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz in the beginning of September 1944.

[John J. Miller]

So what happened then to Anne and her family? There's a lot we know. There are a few things we don't know. But what happens to Anne and her family?

[Ruth Franklin]

Right. So, of course, as you pointed out, the diary ends with that entry of August 1st. We don't have anything in Ann's words about what happened to her after that. So while writing my book, I tried to piece together, as best I could a story, the story of Anne's experiences in the three concentration camps that she was held in. First Westerbork, then Auschwitz, and finally Bergen Belsen, where she died. I tried to piece together those stories using testimony of people who knew her in those camps, who saw her there and later remembered seeing her and wrote about it. And I also read many, many testimonies, especially by women who were imprisoned in those camps at the same time that she was. I don't extrapolate from their experience to say that, you know, if something happened to them, that it, you know, definitely happened to her. But I use details from other women's testimony to fill in a picture of what life was like for a young woman in Auschwitz or in Bergen Belsen during the period that Anne was in prison there.

[John J. Miller]

We know she died. We know she was a victim of the Holocaust, but we don't know the date she died.

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right. For a long time, it was believed that she died in March or maybe even early April, very, very close to the liberation of bergen Belsen on April 15. But actually, researchers at the Anne Frank House relatively recently came up with a theory based on looking very, very closely at the testimony of people who remembered seeing her at Bergen Belsen, that both she and her sister probably died a bit earlier in February. What we do know is that they had typhus. Like many, many other people in that camp, it was a place with extraordinarily poor sanitation. The Inmates were hardly fed at all. They were extremely malnourished and really just left in their own filth. And as such, it was a breeding ground for typhus and other deadly diseases. And people who knew Ann in the camp remember seeing both her and her sister in the late stages of that disease.

[John J. Miller]

How did the manuscript of the Die of a Young Girl survive? How did it survive the Nazi raid of the secret annex? How and why do we even have it today?

[Ruth Franklin]

It's really an amazing story. So this Gestapo officer who led the raid on the annex was looking for something to put the very few valuables that they had there in so he could take them away. And he saw the briefcase that Ann used to keep all her papers together at this point, of course, remember, she's got multiple notebooks in her diary, plus all of these loose pages, just single sheets of paper that she's been using to rewrite the diary on. And so she kept them all in this briefcase. And he just picked it up and dumped all the contents on the floor and, you know, didn't even cast an eye on them and use the suitcase to, you know, carry away their valuables. After the raid happened, two of the helpers, one was Mipris, Otto's secretary and very, very close friend. The other was Bep Vaskiel, who is also an office employee. And as I said earlier, very, very close to Ann. And after everybody had been taken away, they went up to the annex to see if they could salvage anything. And what they found were Ann's papers all over the floor. And so Miep gathered them all up and kept them in her desk. And her hope, of course, was that Anne would return after the war and she would give them back to her. When it became clear that Ann had died, she gave them to Otto instead.

[John J. Miller]

Otto, her father, was the one member of the family who survived the concentration camps?

[Ruth Franklin]

That's right. He was the only one of all of the eight residents of the annex. He actually, he survived Auschwitz by chance. He happened to be in the infirmary when the Nazis decided they were going to evacuate that camp. In January 1945, as the Soviet army was approaching from the east, the Nazis evacuated their camps in Poland towards westward, towards Germany. And they rounded up the inmates and forced them to go on a march, we now known as the death march, taking them closer and closer into the interior of Germany. And at that point, Peter van Pels came to the infirmary to say goodbye to Otto, who, in their time at the camp, the two of them had become very, very close, especially after Peter's father was. He was gassed, probably after only a few weeks in Auschwitz. And Peter came to visit Otto in the infirmary, and Otto begged him to stay there, to hide instead of going on this march. And Peter seems to have believed that he had a chance of surviving. He left, and eventually he would die in Mauthausen, just before the war ended. Otto stayed in the infirmary and was still there, alive, when the Red army came to liberate Auschwitz a few weeks later.

[John J. Miller]

Anne Frank had the life of a girl, and then she had an afterlife as a kind of legend or a myth or an icon. And your excellent new book is called the Many Lives of Anne Frank and has two parts. Part one is called Anne Frank. Part two is called Anne Frank in quotation marks. What do you mean by that? And how do we separate the real Anne Frank with the Anne Frank of legend?

[Ruth Franklin]

So I see this book, as you say, in two parts. One is a biography and the other is a kind of cultural history of the idea of Anne Frank as it's developed over the decades since her diary was first published. I found it amazing working on this book just to see the numerous, you know, uncountable ways in which Anne's face, her image, and her Persona are invoked by people for all sorts of reasons. You know, whether it's in a political context or in art. There's, you know, there's countless works of art inspired by her. There's music set to the. With, you know, set to her diary set to music. There are novels in which people have imagined that she survived and went on to live very different sorts of lives depending on who is doing the imagining. So part of the goal of my book was both to emphasize who Anne was as a human being, to bring in some of the context about not only what happened to her, but also what was going on in the larger historical sense of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, but then also to imagine, to investigate how this idea of her changed and developed.

[John J. Miller]

How did you discover Anne Frank as a reader? What was your first encounter with her in this book?

[Ruth Franklin]

So I actually have my first copy of the diary. It was given to me by my mother when I was 8 years old, which, looking back on it, seems a little young, but I guess that's how I turned out this way. I remember reading the diary as a child and the huge impact it had on me. And we also visited the Anne Frank house when I was quite young on a family trip to Europe. And it always lingered in my mind, even as a child. I remember my sense of how Very, very small. It was Ruth.

[John J. Miller]

One more question. There are a lot of documents, a lot of literature surrounding the Holocaust, witness accounts. There's just a big liter surrounding the Holocaust. Why does this book endure? Not just endure, but kind of flourish? Why are people continuing to turn to this diary or memoir written by a girl? Why this book more than all the others, perhaps? And also what's the case for reading it today?

[Ruth Franklin]

So something that seems bizarre when we look back on it now is that when. When Otto Frank first sought to publish the diary, people around him didn't believe that anybody would be interested in it. He literally got feedback from editors saying, who's going to read this? Of course, the answer is, you know, more than 30 million people all around the world over the next 80 years. He had a vision of what the diary could be that has very much been realized. And he believed that it wasn't just a Jewish book, but it was a book for everyone. He wanted it to be read and understood as a beacon of hope and a guardian against prejudice, anti Semitism, of course, but all kinds of prejudice, whether racism or xenophobia. He believed that the diary had an important role to play in the world. And I think that's very much been borne out. And then, you know, the case for reading the diary today, of course, is that our work is not over as far as that's concerned. You know, we are still fighting against not only antisemitism, but also prejudice in all sorts of forms. And, you know, in fact, the diary, to me, feels as relevant today as it ever has.

[John J. Miller]

Ruth Franklin, thanks so much for joining us and telling us all about the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

[Ruth Franklin]

Thank you so much for having me here.

[John J. Miller]

You've just listened to the Great Books Podcast, a production of National Review. Please subscribe to the Great Books Podcast and leave reviews views of the show that helps us keep this podcast going. Send me your ideas for future episodes. You can reach me through my [e-mail] on Twitter. My handle is at hey, Miller. And last of all, special thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week, the new episode of the Great Books Podcast.