Speaker 1: Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
Speaker 1: Anne Frank's story of fear and laughter, of teen angst
Speaker 1: and young love, of unspeakable horror and unbreakable hope is
Speaker 1: as gripping and relevant in today's volatile world as it
Speaker 1: was when she wrote it in nineteen forty two through
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: Her diary was first published in Dutch, the language in
Speaker 1: which she wrote, in nineteen forty seven. It's now been
Speaker 1: translated into more than seventy languages and has sold more
Speaker 1: than thirty five million copies. It's a testament to the story,
Speaker 1: one that's both personal and universal, and it's important to
Speaker 1: the historical record. It's equally a tribute to the storyteller.
Speaker 1: From the time that The Diary of Anne Frank was
Speaker 1: first published, skulls have poured over it, compared its different versions,
Speaker 1: dissected every page, every entry, every passage, to put Anne
Speaker 1: and her work into appropriate perspectives. In doing so, new
Speaker 1: images of the author have slowly emerged. She's morphed from
Speaker 1: a wide eyed and precocious child, but caught in one
Speaker 1: of history's most tragic episodes, to a curious teen on
Speaker 1: the cusp of adulthood and an exceptional young writer discovering
Speaker 1: herself in a world unhinged. Before the article this episode
Speaker 1: is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with historian Edna
Speaker 1: Friedberg of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as she said,
Speaker 1: Anne's story has changed in that it's acquired more texture
Speaker 1: and nuance over the decades to have her not just
Speaker 1: be some sort of beatified martyr, but a teenaged girl
Speaker 1: with mixed emotions who could possibly be annoying and a
Speaker 1: little arrogant. People now have discovered sections that had been
Speaker 1: edited before about her blooming sexuality, but all sorts of
Speaker 1: things that just make her more of a human being
Speaker 1: and less of an archetype. Today, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the less familiar details of Anne Frank's story. One
Speaker 1: piece that may be forgotten is that it begins as
Speaker 1: an immigrant story. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, Anne and her family fled to
Speaker 1: Amsterdam in the summer of nineteen thirty three, as Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler's Nazi regime came to power in the Netherlands, she
Speaker 1: entered school and learned to speak Dutch. Her father Otto,
Speaker 1: opened a small business. The Franks built a new life,
Speaker 1: but in May of nineteen forty, with Germany continuing their
Speaker 1: march through Europe, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and Anne's
Speaker 1: life was thrown into new turmoil. She was ordered into
Speaker 1: a Jewish only school, and, like all Jewish people under occupation,
Speaker 1: made to live under separate and strict laws. A couple
Speaker 1: of years later, as most of the world descended into war,
Speaker 1: the Nazis called anne older sister Margo back to Germany,
Speaker 1: supposedly to work in a so called labor camp. Fearing
Speaker 1: the worst, Auto moved the entire Frank family himself, his wife, Edith, Margo,
Speaker 1: and Anne into hiding in a secret layer of rooms
Speaker 1: in the back of his business. The date was July
Speaker 1: sixth of nineteen forty two. It's there, in the secret
Speaker 1: annex on a canal in Amsterdam, that Anne, her family,
Speaker 1: and four other Jewish people spent the next two years
Speaker 1: hiding from the Nazis. It's there that Anne, who had
Speaker 1: turned thirteen just before slipping into hiding, wrote the bulk
Speaker 1: of her diary, how Stuffworks. Also spoke with Maureen MacNeil,
Speaker 1: who spent nearly seven years as the director of Education
Speaker 1: at the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York.
Speaker 1: She said, my own reaction as a teenager who wanted
Speaker 1: to be a writer, she really was committed to personal transformation.
Speaker 1: You can see that in her writing she wrestled with
Speaker 1: structural injustice, and in the midst of that she refused
Speaker 1: to live in a world without love. All of that
Speaker 1: introspection is evident early on in Anne's writing. Here, just
Speaker 1: weeks before her move into the Secret Annex, and describes
Speaker 1: a typical school day drama. She wrote, our entire class
Speaker 1: is quaking in its boots. The reason, of course, is
Speaker 1: the upcoming meeting in which the teachers decide who will
Speaker 1: be promoted to the next grade and who will be
Speaker 1: kept back. If you ask me, there are so many
Speaker 1: dummies that about a quarter of the class should be
Speaker 1: kept back. But teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth.
Speaker 1: Maybe this time they'll be unpredictable in the right direction
Speaker 1: for a change. Once in the Secret Annex, Anne's diary
Speaker 1: served as a way to both pass the time and
Speaker 1: hone her burgeoning skills as a writer and as a
Speaker 1: friend and confidante. She often addressed her entries to a
Speaker 1: series of friends, both real and imaginary, such as her
Speaker 1: school friend Jack Leane and a character from a popular
Speaker 1: novel series named Kitty, as well as other characters of
Speaker 1: her own invention. She covered in often harsh details, the
Speaker 1: seemingly mundane that run ins with her mother and squabbles
Speaker 1: with others. In the annex she was blushingly honest about
Speaker 1: her own insecurities, and typically for a kid her age,
Speaker 1: wondered about her own looks and her emerging sexuality. In
Speaker 1: passages kept from the original published version, as she described
Speaker 1: in great detail her changing body. In pages only recently
Speaker 1: revealed of Anne had covered them with brown paper, she
Speaker 1: offered thoughts on sex and prostitution, and as the months
Speaker 1: in hiding wore on, she wrote achingly of falling in
Speaker 1: love with a fellow hideaway, Peter van Pells. At least
Speaker 1: three versions of the diary exist, the first, of course,
Speaker 1: being the diary as Anne originally wrote it. The second
Speaker 1: is an edit of her own making, as she hoped
Speaker 1: to publish a book based on the diary, spurred partially
Speaker 1: by a Dutch announcement in March of nineteen forty four
Speaker 1: that officials were looking to collect personal accounts from the occupation.
Speaker 1: In this version, she removed some of the earlier and
Speaker 1: harsher parts of her diary, especially the entries on her
Speaker 1: love for Peter and some of the more stringent criticism
Speaker 1: of her mother. The third version is a further edit
Speaker 1: created by Anne's father Auto after her death and the
Speaker 1: war's end, when he decided to try to get it published.
Speaker 1: The third version is the most popularly known, and it's
Speaker 1: a bit whitewashed. For example, it does not include Ann's
Speaker 1: references to her developing curiosity about sex, which would have
Speaker 1: been especially controversial in the nineteen forties and fifties. Scattered
Speaker 1: throughout the diary, mixed in with the every day is
Speaker 1: an acute recognition of the horrors that existed outside the
Speaker 1: secret annex. Anne described a permeator fear in her family's
Speaker 1: prison and wrestled with the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
Speaker 1: In an entry in January of nineteen forty three, she wrote,
Speaker 1: I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the
Speaker 1: war has brought, but I'd only make myself more miserable.
Speaker 1: All we can do is wait as calmly as possible
Speaker 1: for it to end. A Jews and Christians alike are waiting.
Speaker 1: The whole world is waiting, and many are waiting for death.
Speaker 1: Friedberg said, I think part of what makes her diary
Speaker 1: so powerful and resident for so many people has to
Speaker 1: do with the circumstances in which she writes it. And
Speaker 1: by that I don't mean the Holocaust, but because she
Speaker 1: was in a cloistered hiding place for so long, her
Speaker 1: diary is her constant companion. They're in this attic, they
Speaker 1: are terrified, they're also taken out of life. That gives
Speaker 1: a clarity of voice. In early April of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: Anne wrote, when I write, I can shake off all
Speaker 1: my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived. But
Speaker 1: and that's a big question, will I ever be able
Speaker 1: to write something great? Will I ever become a journalist
Speaker 1: or a writer? I hope so oh, I hope so
Speaker 1: very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all
Speaker 1: my thoughts, ideals and fantasies. On August first of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty four, more than two years after going into hiding
Speaker 1: in the secret annex, Anne's awareness of herself and her
Speaker 1: place in the world may have been at its peak.
Speaker 1: She wrote about a personality split into a flippant and
Speaker 1: fun loving on the outside, but purer, deeper, and finer
Speaker 1: on the inside. She wrote, I keep trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to become what I'd like to be and
Speaker 1: what I could be if only there were no other
Speaker 1: people in the world. That was the last entry Ann's diary.
Speaker 1: Three days later, on the morning of August fourth of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, the Nazis discovered the eight people hiding
Speaker 1: in the Secret Annex and sent them to the Auschwitz
Speaker 1: concentration camp in Poland, where Edith died in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. Margo and Ann were transferred to the
Speaker 1: bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In February of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, just two months before the Allies liberated bergen Belsen,
Speaker 1: Margo and Ann died as well. Margo was nineteen and
Speaker 1: Anne was fifteen years old. Immediately after the war, Otto,
Speaker 1: the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, returned to Amsterdam
Speaker 1: and recovered Anne's diaries. Two years later, he first published
Speaker 1: his slightly edited version. Friedberg said Ann's story resonates today
Speaker 1: for a few reasons. One is because of the power, clarity,
Speaker 1: and authenticity of her voice. The second is because you
Speaker 1: feel that she almost made it. The Frank family and
Speaker 1: the other four Dutch Jews in hiding with them survived
Speaker 1: for two years because of the bravery and sustained support
Speaker 1: of others non Jews. That is inspiring, but the tragedy
Speaker 1: is that someone betrayed them. She almost lived to see liberation.
Speaker 1: That is another part of what makes her story so
Speaker 1: appealing to people. They see in her the symbol of
Speaker 1: a missed chance at redemption, a missed chance at a
Speaker 1: happy ending, a gnawing questions surrounding Anne and her friends
Speaker 1: and family, and the secret annex remains eighty years later.
Speaker 1: Who did turn them in? In the twenty teens, a
Speaker 1: group of cold case investigators led by a former FBI
Speaker 1: agent delved into the question, and they published their findings
Speaker 1: in a book in twenty twenty two, But it seems
Speaker 1: to have raised more questions than it answered. Many theories abound,
Speaker 1: other groups are still looking into it. We may never know,
Speaker 1: and other aspects of the story are still developing. In
Speaker 1: July of twenty eighteen, a Researchers at the Anne Frank
Speaker 1: House in Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum revealed
Speaker 1: that before going into hiding in the secret annex, Otto
Speaker 1: tried to emigrate with his family to America, only to
Speaker 1: be stymied by stringent American immigration laws at the time.
Speaker 1: Some subjects and aspects of Anne's writing are bleak, the
Speaker 1: dual threats of bigotry and fascism, the plight of immigrants
Speaker 1: and refugees, the terrors of war. Anne grappled with those horrors,
Speaker 1: and the world still faces them today. Yet Anne also
Speaker 1: wrote of love and understanding. She wrote of hope. McNeil said,
Speaker 1: when she was looking at the blank page, she wasn't
Speaker 1: just a girl, she wasn't just a chatterbox. She wasn't
Speaker 1: just a refugee. She was a human being wanting to
Speaker 1: make a difference and willing to take the risk to
Speaker 1: put it on the page. So her dream came true.
Speaker 1: She is in the Western literary canon. Her work is
Speaker 1: just as important as Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman or
Speaker 1: anybody else. Anne never got a chance to live the
Speaker 1: life that she dreamed of, but all of these years later,
Speaker 1: her words endure. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Anne Frank's Diary is Still Spilling Its Secrets on how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klin. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.