Recess! Media

Anne Frank’s diary was an assignment in my 8th grade English class. Each day we would discuss her writings I remember finding her so remarkable, brave, and other-worldly and at the same time, she was EXACTLY like me. Our class discussed the Holocaust, and the circumstances that forced Anne and her family into hiding. It was incomprehensible for us, at 13, to imagine that human beings had the potential for such evil.

My most vivid memory of this class was the day we completed the last entry. Our teacher was thoughtful enough to have us read it aloud in class – somehow she knew that we would need to be together as we lost Ann. The entire classroom was stunned. At our age, stories still ended in a sense of closure and completion. Anne Frank’s diary stops, but it does not end. And the end of Ann’s story, as provided by the editor, is so heartbreakingly sad.

Ever since that 8th grade class, I have revisited Anne and her diary each time I needed a lesson in transcending obstacles in my own life. Today, I invite you to log on to the Internet where you can take a virtual tour of the Secret Annex in memory of Anne Frank, who was born on this day in 1929.

At the Anne Frank House site, you ll find a picture tour of the Secret Annex that helps you visualize how Ann and her family lived for more than 2 years. But the most moving exhibit follows the creation and publication of Anne’s diary now in print for more than 50 years and translated into over 60 languages, it is one of the most widely-read books in the world.

On Saturday, July 15th , 1944 Anne Frank writes one of the last entries to her diary. It is also the most famous. It reads: “It ‘s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the Meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”