458 Frank, Anne
Sur vival in Anne Frank: The Diary of a
Young Girl
Few readers who pick up a copy of Anne Frank: The
Diary of a Young Girl are unaware of the demise of
its titular heroine. Like 6 million other Jews, Anne
Frank died in a concentration camp during World
War II at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
It may seem strange, then, to identify survival as a
guiding theme in her work. However, Anne Frank’s
diary chronicles a succession of days in which the
only task at hand for the eight people living in the
annex of Otto Frank’s warehouse was to survive. The
fact that Anne’s diary also survived extinction is a
happy miracle.
The greatest stress for the denizens of the secret
hiding place was the constant fear of being found.
Burglars nearly found their way to the annex on
more than one occasion, causing great trepidation
among its inhabitants. In fact, any unusual noise
or unexpected visitor below was cause for alarm.
When the bell rings one evening without reason
Anne “turned white at once, got a tummy-ache
and heart palpitations, all from fear.” Anne suffers
terrible dreams on the heels of such events. In one
recurring dream, she says, “they come and take us
away at night.” Anne sees the annex as an island
in the midst of so much chaos, but her dreams
foreshadow a darker time when danger will engulf
their safe refuge. For over two years Anne and her
seven companions survive the perils of exposure, but
the fate Anne believed was inevitable came to pass
when they were finally discovered, arrested, and sent
to concentration camps.
Those two years spent in hiding were filled
with hardship and suffering. Anne and her family
endured deprivations from food to light to fresh air.
Frequent illnesses made captivity even more stifling.
Food especially preoccupied their minds since falter-
ing rations and decaying stores of fruit, meat, and
vegetables confronted them three times a day. Anne
and her cohort obtain food through coupons and
ration cards, and purchases made on the black mar-
ket. The economic effects of the war on the Dutch
trickle down to affect the secret annex, too. What
may seem like small losses such as diseased potatoes
or days without butter are enough to turn the whole
annex into a “tedious existence.” Light was used at a
bare minimum. When Anne begs her father to light
the candle during a particularly treacherous air raid,
the usually doting father refuses until Anne’s mother
intervenes. Coal runs out quickly, leaving the annex
colder than before. Illness, too, plagues Anne, as she
must contort herself uncomfortably to avoid being
heard. “It’s wretched to be ill here,” she said, “When
I wanted to cough—one, two, three—I crawled
under the blankets and tried to stifle the noise.” Yet
everyone did survive the lack of proper food, lack of
light and heat, and sickness.
Perhaps for Anne, especially, the deprivation
of fresh air and sunlight was almost insurmount-
able. The youngest member of the annex, Anne
had to survive the same fears and privations as her
roommates while also going through puberty under
their watchful eyes. Had Anne not been required
to escape into anonymity with her family, her tense
relationship with her mother, which brought out in
Anne a caustic, sometimes cruel reaction, may not
have been so severe. While Anne felt spring bloom-
ing inside of her, she was captive to the endless
winter of the secret annex.
Anne writes in her diary that she can hardly
remember the girl she once was before she met her
fate in the secret annex. The girl she was would not
have survived what Anne endures in hiding. Anne
says, “I hear nothing but this sort of talk the whole
day long, invasion and nothing but invasion, argu-
ments about suffering from hunger, dying, bombs,
fire extinguishers, sleeping bags, Jewish vouchers,
poisonous gases, etc. etc.” The constant chatter in
the annex revolves around these issues of life and
death. Gone are the days of schoolboy crushes and
bantering with teachers. In hiding, Anne grapples
with the serious business of survival on a daily basis.
Anne’s diary is one of the most widely read first-
person accounts of the Holocaust. For decades her
voice has been a resounding reminder of the cruel-
ties inflicted on Jewish people during World War II.
Miep Gies, one of Otto Frank’s devoted employees
who aided their survival while they hid, collected
Anne’s diary after she and her family were removed to
concentration camps. Anne’s voice has endured even
her own death, and the millions of people who con-
tinue to read her words are a testament to her survival.
Jeana Hrepich