Anne Frank Reaction Paper

Anne Frank is the diary of a little girl following the events surrounding a
thirteen year old girl who grows up Jewish and lives in Amsterdam during the
Holocaust. As the events of World War II began Anne was a typical girl who
attended school and was aware of the war and world around her, but at the
time, wasn’t very fearful for her safety. Unfortunately, reality struck Anne as
the news of World War II progressed, accompanied by the call for her old
sister to be taken away to a concentration camp. Suddenly, the world as Anne
perceived it would change dramatically. Soon, they were living in an annex,
an addition to a building, hiding from the SS officers of the Nazis. The diary
of Anne Frank gives an insight to the Jewish perspective of the Holocaust and
the prejudice and discrimination not only that the Jews underwent but of
others in the society as well.

As I read the diary of Anne Frank I began to learn what so many of the
Jewish people had experienced during World War II. Anne started writing in
her diary when she first received it for her birthday. Her diary recalls many of
the feeling and events that Jews felt during World War II. I learned that
Nazi’s discriminated against Jews in a multitude of ways. First, they were
forced to wear yellow stars to signify if they were Jewish or not. Also, All
Jews were forced to hand over all bikes and were not allowed to ride the
streetcars anymore. In addition to those restrictions, Jewish people were only
allowed to attend certain schools and restaurants. Like many Jewish people,
Anne seemed calm and unafraid of the World and the war. She looked at
hiding from the Nazi’s as an adventure. This would be short-lived as she soon
realized that being trapped inside a room with other families can be
frustrating for a young girl. She envied others outside that still were allowed
to play freely. She soon realized that her life was at risk every day.

While hiding in a secret annex for a little more than two years, Anne wrote a
lot about her feelings and events of her time in solitude with her family and
others. Frustrations run high when emotions run high and there is no privacy
to escape to. “I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue
sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. . . . [They loom] before us like an
impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out
and implore, ‘Oh ring, ring, open wide and let us out!’” (Frank, 1995, pg.
108). This passage was the most meaningful to me, I learned about the fear
that All Jews in hiding must have faced. I learned that every day for two
years Anne and her family lived in fear, afraid that they would not be free,
afraid that they will not see each other again, and afraid that they will not
survive. Every time a bomb raid siren or something as little as a knock on the
door went off, complete fear would set in. The longer the war went on the
more afraid they became that they would be caught and killed. Having to live
life that way for so long must have taken a tremendous toll on a person.

The events that Anne frank describes in her diary are very important. The
passages in her diary portray discrimination in its purest form. The diary
shows the prejudice and discrimination that millions of Jews underwent. It
shows to the rest of the world how people can act. It is eye opening to how
people treat others in today’s society, but most importantly it gives us insight
to ourselves and how we have been treating others. It shows how one
person’s beliefs can be passed on to an entire society and can cause so much
hate to a particular group. “I keep trying to find a way to become what I’d
like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the
world” (Frank, 1995, pg. 247). Anne’s last sentence is very meaningful and
moving. It says that there will always be good and bad people in the world,
and that the only way that there will be no bad people is if she was the only
one left. It also says that no one can really ever be who they want to be
because of the unscrupulous people in the world. Until we can rid people of
prejudice and discrimination we will never be able to achieve the things we
want to.

The Legacy of Anne Frank

Anne Frank’s story succeeds because it is a personal story that enables individuals to
understand one of the watershed events of our time, and because it communicates what can
happen when hate and intolerance prevail. The essence of Anne Frank’s message has become
a universal symbol of tolerance, strength, and hope in the face of adversity—a symbol
transcending all cultures and ages and conveying the idea that discrimination and intolerance
are wrong and dangerous.

Anne Frank’s diary has enduring significance. Her perspective resonates with the feelings and
attitudes of teenagers in the post-Holocaust generation. Like so many of today’s youth, Anne
aspired to be independent and respected for who she was, not what others wanted her to be.
Anne’s reflections on personal, social, and political themes have as much relevance today as
they did in the era of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

The Diary
On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank’s parents gave her a small red-and-white-plaid diary for her
thirteenth birthday. More than fifty years later, this diary has become one of the best-known
memoirs of the Holocaust.

When Anne received her diary, she and her family were living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
which was occupied by the German Army. By Anne’s thirteenth birthday she, like every other
European Jew, was living in fear of the Nazis and their anti-Jewish decrees. On July 6, 1942,
her family was forced to go into hiding. Although they could take very few things with them,
Anne brought her diary to her new home, which she called the "Secret Annex." For the two
years that Anne lived in the Annex, she wrote down her thoughts and feelings. She wrote about
her life with the seven other people in hiding–her parents, her sister, the van Pels family (called
van Daan by Anne), and Fritz Pfeffer (called Alfred Dussel by Anne), as well as the war going
on around her and her hopes for the future.

Anne Frank, born on June 12, 1929, was the second daughter of Otto and Edith Frank, both
from respected German Jewish families engaged in commerce for many generations. Otto
Frank could trace his heritage in Frankfurt back to the seventeenth century, and Edith Holländer
Frank came from a prominent Aachen family. Anne and her older sister, Margot, were raised in
Germany in an atmosphere of tolerance; the Franks had friends of many faiths and nationalities.
Otto Frank served honorably as an officer in the German Army during World War I.

One important factor that made Anne Frank's experiences more

susceptible to "universalization" was the particularly "western"
orientation of the author. As they slowly and reluctantly pulled
themselves away from their attachment to German culture, the Franks
were increasingly oriented toward the language, literature, and
ideals of their "new" Dutch homeland and their anticipated English
liberators (the Frank family understood the western front solely in
terms of the British army, and paid almost no attention to American
forces).

Charging that the deaths of the Frank family may have been due to
their own failure "to believe in Auschwitz," Bettelheim concludes
that any attempt to derive idealistic lessons from Anne Frank's life
denies the real implications of the Holocaust: "If all men are good
at heart, there never really was an Auschwitz; nor is there any
possibility that it may recur" (p. 189). While Bettelheim has been
strongly criticized for suggesting that any Jews were to blame for
their own deaths, his article nevertheless stands out in this
collection for its assertion that understanding the Holocaust
requires asking about the variety of responses to persecution,
repression, and extermination.

"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good
at heart."[5] This line, taken from Anne Frank's diary entry for
July 15, 1944, has become the focal point for debates about the
"meaning" of this young woman's legacy. This phrase is used at the
end of the play and film, where it serves, in the words of Doneson,
as "the affirmation of post-Holocaust civilization" (p. 133). This
use of the famous phrase is strongly denounced by critics.
Bettelheim declares emphatically that "this statement is not
justified by anything Anne actually told her diary," and is
particularly offensive given what we know was the young girl's
impending destruction (p. 188). Warning that this sentence is "the
least appropriate epitaph conceivable" for the victims and survivors
of the Holocaust, Langer calls attention instead to Anne Frank's own
"somber vision," including her references to seeing Jews on
Amsterdam streets "join in the march of death" and her warning that
"There's in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to
murder and rage. . ." (p. 201).

In the end, however, nothing that an observer, critic, or scholar

writes can match the direct power of Anne Frank's own reflections.
On December 24, 1943, for example, she made the following entry in
her diary: "Believe me, if you've been shut up for a year and half,
it can get to be too much for you sometimes. But feelings can't be
ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem. I long to
ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know
that I am free, and yet I can't let it show. Just imagine what
would happen if all eight of us were to feel sorry for ourselves or
walk around with the discontent clearly shown on our faces. Where
would that get us? I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever
understand what I mean, if anyone will ever overlook my ingratitude
and not worry about whether or not I'm Jewish and merely see me as a
teenager badly in need of some good plain fun. I don't know, and I
wouldn't be able to talk about it with anyone, since I'm sure I'd
start to cry. Crying can bring relief, as long as you don't cry
alone." [10] The tragedy for Anne Frank, as for millions of her
fellow victims, was the way the killing machines of the Holocaust
took away these desires to "feel young and know that I'm free," to
have "some good plain fun," and simply to be understood on their own
terms.