History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone, Gerrit Bolkstein, education minister of the Dutch government in exile said in a radio broadcast on March 28, 1944 while urging his countrymen to collect vast quantities of simple, everyday material as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation. If our descendants are to fully understand what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we really need are ordinary documents "" a diary, letters. Anne Frank mentions this broadcast in her The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition edited by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler (Penguin, Special Indian Price, £ 3.99) which encouraged her to continue writing her diary because ten years after the War, people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding.
Anne Frank's extraordinary commitment to the immediacy of her individual experience in the face of crushing circumstances is precisely what has made the Diary one of the most compelling accounts of the planned extermination of six million Jews. The first edition published in 1947 has now been augmented by the definitive edition to coincide with the 50th anniversary of her death in a Nazi concentration camp. The new edition in no way affects the integrity of the old one which brought the Diary and its message to millions of people.
I'd like to publish a book called The Secret Annex, she writes in her Diary on May 11, 1944. It remains to be seen whether I'll succeed but my Diary can serve as the basis. Anne Frank systematically organised her entries giving the residents of the Secret Annex pseudonyms like characters in a novel, rearranging passages for better narrative effect.
Anne kept her Diary from June 12, 1942, the day her parents gave her a red-and-white notebook. From the first day she addressed the notebook as a trusted friend, Kitty and her entries took the shape of letters, giving the Diary the intimacy and vivacity of a developing friendship. The growing relationship was, of course, with her own developing self "" the conversion of a child into a person. As I've told you many times, I'm split into two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life, and above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, a saucy joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne's better side and that's why people can't stand me...
There are searching passages about her erotic feelings and her urgent curiosity about sexuality, and like growing daughters anywhere in the world, a distancing from her apparently critical mother. As she had said earlier, I can't imagine having to live like Mother.. and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten.. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after death!
Anne writes freely and candidly of her first kiss with Peter, the son of the family sharing her hiding place: Oh it was so wonderful. I could hardly talk, my pleasure was too intense; he caressed my cheek and arm, a bit clumsily. But in the midst of this normality the clouds of war were never far away. I simply can't imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk about 'after the war' but it's as if I were talking about a castle in the air, something that can never come true. I see eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we're standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We're surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other... I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions.
The Diary, now 50 years old, remains astonishing and excruciating. It is a work sick with terror and tension, perhaps more so because it has been written by a child who put down her observations just as they came to her. On February 12, 1944, Anne tells 'Kitty': I feel as if I were about to explode... I walk from one room to another, breathe through a crack in the window frame... I think spring is inside me. The crack in the window pane was her only passport to the world outside.