WEBVTT - 2025-03-27-brainstuff-anne-frank 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.600 Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:15.640 Anne Frank's story of fear and laughter, of teen angst 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:20.800 and young love, of unspeakable horror and unbreakable hope is 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:24.520 as gripping and relevant in today's volatile world as it 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.040 was when she wrote it in nineteen forty two through 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.360 nineteen forty four, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.720 Her diary was first published in Dutch, the language in 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.120 which she wrote, in nineteen forty seven. It's now been 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:42.239 translated into more than seventy languages and has sold more 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.120 than thirty five million copies. It's a testament to the story, 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.960 one that's both personal and universal, and it's important to 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.240 the historical record. It's equally a tribute to the storyteller. 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:58.640 From the time that The Diary of Anne Frank was 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.920 first published, skulls have poured over it, compared its different versions, 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:07.039 dissected every page, every entry, every passage, to put Anne 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:11.640 and her work into appropriate perspectives. In doing so, new 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.520 images of the author have slowly emerged. She's morphed from 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.200 a wide eyed and precocious child, but caught in one 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.800 of history's most tragic episodes, to a curious teen on 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:25.640 the cusp of adulthood and an exceptional young writer discovering 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:31.679 herself in a world unhinged. Before the article this episode 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.240 is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with historian Edna 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:38.680 Friedberg of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as she said, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.880 Anne's story has changed in that it's acquired more texture 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.840 and nuance over the decades to have her not just 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.360 be some sort of beatified martyr, but a teenaged girl 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:52.680 with mixed emotions who could possibly be annoying and a 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.560 little arrogant. People now have discovered sections that had been 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.760 edited before about her blooming sexuality, but all sorts of 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.360 things that just make her more of a human being 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:07.400 and less of an archetype. Today, let's talk about some 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.360 of the less familiar details of Anne Frank's story. One 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:13.720 piece that may be forgotten is that it begins as 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:19.120 an immigrant story. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany, 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.080 in nineteen twenty nine, Anne and her family fled to 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:24.840 Amsterdam in the summer of nineteen thirty three, as Adolf 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.960 Hitler's Nazi regime came to power in the Netherlands, she 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.359 entered school and learned to speak Dutch. Her father Otto, 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.520 opened a small business. The Franks built a new life, 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.280 but in May of nineteen forty, with Germany continuing their 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.960 march through Europe, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and Anne's 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.359 life was thrown into new turmoil. She was ordered into 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.840 a Jewish only school, and, like all Jewish people under occupation, 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.560 made to live under separate and strict laws. A couple 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.280 of years later, as most of the world descended into war, 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.040 the Nazis called anne older sister Margo back to Germany, 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:07.760 supposedly to work in a so called labor camp. Fearing 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:12.560 the worst, Auto moved the entire Frank family himself, his wife, Edith, Margo, 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.960 and Anne into hiding in a secret layer of rooms 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.080 in the back of his business. The date was July 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:24.920 sixth of nineteen forty two. It's there, in the secret 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.280 annex on a canal in Amsterdam, that Anne, her family, 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.600 and four other Jewish people spent the next two years 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.120 hiding from the Nazis. It's there that Anne, who had 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.600 turned thirteen just before slipping into hiding, wrote the bulk 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:43.680 of her diary, how Stuffworks. Also spoke with Maureen MacNeil, 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.760 who spent nearly seven years as the director of Education 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.560 at the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York. 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:54.360 She said, my own reaction as a teenager who wanted 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.400 to be a writer, she really was committed to personal transformation. 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.600 You can see that in her writing she wrestled with 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:05.720 structural injustice, and in the midst of that she refused 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:10.760 to live in a world without love. All of that 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.920 introspection is evident early on in Anne's writing. Here, just 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.080 weeks before her move into the Secret Annex, and describes 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:23.560 a typical school day drama. She wrote, our entire class 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.279 is quaking in its boots. The reason, of course, is 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:28.880 the upcoming meeting in which the teachers decide who will 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:30.680 be promoted to the next grade and who will be 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.360 kept back. If you ask me, there are so many 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:35.160 dummies that about a quarter of the class should be 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.920 kept back. But teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth. 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:41.960 Maybe this time they'll be unpredictable in the right direction 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:47.760 for a change. Once in the Secret Annex, Anne's diary 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.080 served as a way to both pass the time and 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:53.480 hone her burgeoning skills as a writer and as a 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:57.400 friend and confidante. She often addressed her entries to a 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.840 series of friends, both real and imaginary, such as her 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.640 school friend Jack Leane and a character from a popular 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.640 novel series named Kitty, as well as other characters of 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.240 her own invention. She covered in often harsh details, the 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.120 seemingly mundane that run ins with her mother and squabbles 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.960 with others. In the annex she was blushingly honest about 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:22.320 her own insecurities, and typically for a kid her age, 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:28.000 wondered about her own looks and her emerging sexuality. In 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.760 passages kept from the original published version, as she described 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:35.839 in great detail her changing body. In pages only recently 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.719 revealed of Anne had covered them with brown paper, she 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:43.160 offered thoughts on sex and prostitution, and as the months 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.279 in hiding wore on, she wrote achingly of falling in 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:51.919 love with a fellow hideaway, Peter van Pells. At least 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.080 three versions of the diary exist, the first, of course, 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.280 being the diary as Anne originally wrote it. The second 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.839 is an edit of her own making, as she hoped 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.719 to publish a book based on the diary, spurred partially 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.159 by a Dutch announcement in March of nineteen forty four 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.839 that officials were looking to collect personal accounts from the occupation. 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.080 In this version, she removed some of the earlier and 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.240 harsher parts of her diary, especially the entries on her 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.520 love for Peter and some of the more stringent criticism 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:24.760 of her mother. The third version is a further edit 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.960 created by Anne's father Auto after her death and the 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.680 war's end, when he decided to try to get it published. 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.960 The third version is the most popularly known, and it's 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.320 a bit whitewashed. For example, it does not include Ann's 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.919 references to her developing curiosity about sex, which would have 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:49.479 been especially controversial in the nineteen forties and fifties. Scattered 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.880 throughout the diary, mixed in with the every day is 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.400 an acute recognition of the horrors that existed outside the 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:01.560 secret annex. Anne described a permeator fear in her family's 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.200 prison and wrestled with the uncertainty of what lay ahead. 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.679 In an entry in January of nineteen forty three, she wrote, 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.760 I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.800 war has brought, but I'd only make myself more miserable. 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.360 All we can do is wait as calmly as possible 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.880 for it to end. A Jews and Christians alike are waiting. 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.360 The whole world is waiting, and many are waiting for death. 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.720 Friedberg said, I think part of what makes her diary 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.680 so powerful and resident for so many people has to 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.440 do with the circumstances in which she writes it. And 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.000 by that I don't mean the Holocaust, but because she 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.520 was in a cloistered hiding place for so long, her 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.160 diary is her constant companion. They're in this attic, they 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:52.360 are terrified, they're also taken out of life. That gives 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:58.680 a clarity of voice. In early April of nineteen forty four, 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.200 Anne wrote, when I write, I can shake off all 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:06.720 my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived. But 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.000 and that's a big question, will I ever be able 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.240 to write something great? Will I ever become a journalist 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.800 or a writer? I hope so oh, I hope so 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.520 very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:27.000 my thoughts, ideals and fantasies. On August first of nineteen 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.040 forty four, more than two years after going into hiding 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.319 in the secret annex, Anne's awareness of herself and her 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:35.600 place in the world may have been at its peak. 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.600 She wrote about a personality split into a flippant and 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.640 fun loving on the outside, but purer, deeper, and finer 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:49.280 on the inside. She wrote, I keep trying to find 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:51.600 a way to become what I'd like to be and 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.280 what I could be if only there were no other 0:08:54.360 --> 0:09:00.720 people in the world. That was the last entry Ann's diary. 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:04.959 Three days later, on the morning of August fourth of 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.520 nineteen forty four, the Nazis discovered the eight people hiding 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.400 in the Secret Annex and sent them to the Auschwitz 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:15.120 concentration camp in Poland, where Edith died in January of 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.280 nineteen forty five. Margo and Ann were transferred to the 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:24.680 bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In February of nineteen 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.800 forty five, just two months before the Allies liberated bergen Belsen, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.760 Margo and Ann died as well. Margo was nineteen and 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:40.440 Anne was fifteen years old. Immediately after the war, Otto, 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.400 the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, returned to Amsterdam 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.920 and recovered Anne's diaries. Two years later, he first published 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:56.040 his slightly edited version. Friedberg said Ann's story resonates today 0:09:56.200 --> 0:10:00.440 for a few reasons. One is because of the power, clarity, 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:04.240 and authenticity of her voice. The second is because you 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:07.600 feel that she almost made it. The Frank family and 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.679 the other four Dutch Jews in hiding with them survived 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.960 for two years because of the bravery and sustained support 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:18.680 of others non Jews. That is inspiring, but the tragedy 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:23.120 is that someone betrayed them. She almost lived to see liberation. 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.240 That is another part of what makes her story so 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.320 appealing to people. They see in her the symbol of 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.319 a missed chance at redemption, a missed chance at a 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:40.240 happy ending, a gnawing questions surrounding Anne and her friends 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.440 and family, and the secret annex remains eighty years later. 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:49.200 Who did turn them in? In the twenty teens, a 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.360 group of cold case investigators led by a former FBI 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.800 agent delved into the question, and they published their findings 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.480 in a book in twenty twenty two, But it seems 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.800 to have raised more questions than it answered. Many theories abound, 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.520 other groups are still looking into it. We may never know, 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:12.760 and other aspects of the story are still developing. In 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.480 July of twenty eighteen, a Researchers at the Anne Frank 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.520 House in Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum revealed 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:23.040 that before going into hiding in the secret annex, Otto 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.640 tried to emigrate with his family to America, only to 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.040 be stymied by stringent American immigration laws at the time. 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:37.040 Some subjects and aspects of Anne's writing are bleak, the 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.600 dual threats of bigotry and fascism, the plight of immigrants 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:47.080 and refugees, the terrors of war. Anne grappled with those horrors, 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.480 and the world still faces them today. Yet Anne also 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:58.960 wrote of love and understanding. She wrote of hope. McNeil said, 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.840 when she was looking at the blank page, she wasn't 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.720 just a girl, she wasn't just a chatterbox. She wasn't 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.080 just a refugee. She was a human being wanting to 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.440 make a difference and willing to take the risk to 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:14.160 put it on the page. So her dream came true. 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:18.000 She is in the Western literary canon. Her work is 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.160 just as important as Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman or 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:27.440 anybody else. Anne never got a chance to live the 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.280 life that she dreamed of, but all of these years later, 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:39.560 her words endure. Today's episode is based on the article 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.600 Anne Frank's Diary is Still Spilling Its Secrets on how 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:46.040 stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.360 production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.240 dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klin. For more 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.160 podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:12:55.280 --> 0:13:06.960 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.