VeganCleopatra

3.5 stars

First off I should note that I do feel slightly guilty only giving this book 3.5 stars, but I rate largely upon enjoyment not historical importance.

I absolutely believe everyone should read Anne Frank's diary and I really question why I was never told to do so in school. While reading it it becomes increasingly more difficult to remind yourself that you are not in fact reading some YA fictional novel because Anne truly writes beautifully for her age and has tremendous insight. The diary also features what I'm sure most every teenager's diary would feature: boys, griping about family and really general routine things found day to day. But in Anne's case there are also updates about the war, descriptions of life in hiding and for me the saddest aspect of all: Anne's hopes and dreams for the future that we know she never gets to have.

One thing definitely surprised me about the situation and that was the living conditions. I was under the impression that she was living in a much smaller, more impoverished situation during hiding. I cannot pinpoint why that would be other than to say that seeing all the horrors of WW2 rather created an extremely bleak image in my mind whether one was in hiding or not. I certainly did not think that Anne was eating rather regularly and even had access to a bathroom and multiple floors of living space. This is not to say that hiding was a good experience by any means, I was simply expecting even worse.

One of the reasons I would give for not giving more stars would be the repetitiveness of the entries. I imagine anyone's diary would suffer from such a problem, which is why I could almost guarantee no one's diary would receive a very high rating from me. Anne's issues with her mother and other fellow hiders plays a large part in the entries and they all started to run together for me after awhile. As I read an expanded version I wonder if there were more in it than the more common edition? I found her entries involving war updates and her hopes and dreams and general positive spirit the most interesting. I could not help but wish that she could have been able to get out of life everything she so terribly wished for because she was a intelligent, charming girl with a lot of spunk.

I do believe that this edition (I cannot vouch for any others) would have been more impactful if it had included more historical details (such as statistics) about WW2 and the Holocaust at the end. I think someone more ignorant to the overall facts would walk away more impacted by Anne's tale if they were to do so.

Overall Anne's diary reminds us how similar we all are, despite a separation of language, time, race, you name it. It is just heartbreaking to realize that her life and many others just like it were wiped away due to hate. It just twists the knife that much more knowing that Anne and those with her were months away from being freed by Allied forces.

I really wish we knew who had informed on Anne and the others.