The Significance of Anne's Story

• The story is literature--Anne is a beautiful writer. Her sentences are clear. Her thoughts are written with verbal clarity. Her prose has flow and rhythm. She has wonderful insights about herself and those around her. The honesty is striking. She writes from the heart and her writing changes the life of the reader.

• The story is an incredible description of the pain and joy of adolescence--This is an intensely personal story of a girl passing from cheeky adolescence to the self-reflective maturity of an idealistic young woman. Anne is impeccably honest with her feelings. She describes first love with sincerity and stinging joy. She is perceptive about people. When you read the diary, you can see, feel, and remember.

• The story is a triumph of the human spirit--Anne Frank had every reason to hate, but she loved and forgave. In the end, despite having had to live in secret for more than two years, and despite knowing all the horrors of the time--the Gestapo, the gas chambers, theft, anarchy--Anne was still able to believe that deep down people must be good. She could still see beauty from her window. She could still grow within herself.

• Anne gave a name and a face to the Holocaust--But the greatest significance of Anne's diary is the intimate identification with a victim of Hitler. It's one thing to know there's been a tragedy: it's something else to learn that your dear friend has been killed. From a small secret house, from the concentration camps, from among the bombs, death, and hatred comes the small sweet voice of a young girl who simply tells the truth, and her tragedy becomes ours. We feel the horror. We feel the wretched uselessness of intolerance.