every person should read this at least once in their lives.

I am basically a terrible person.

This isn't a review- I'm not going to go into my reasons for giving this book 2 stars. That would not do anybody any good. I will simply say that I feel extremely guilty rating the book this low, but I hope people understand that it doesn't reflect my view of the Holocaust as a whole, or my views of Anne Frank as a person. I have the utmost respect for both.

The girlfriend of my great-grandfather* lost her mother and her daughter in the Holocaust. Her daughter had a hairpin, a beautiful golden thing with topaz and pearls, and it was passed down to me. I never got to meet my great-grandfather nor Fanny (his girlfriend), but she put the pin in a box and gave it to my mother with these words written on it. (I was still a baby, and neither of them would live past my second birthday.)







That pin is a lot like this book. Whenever I look at it, nestled in my jewellery box, I feel the weight of generations of guilt pressing down on me. Its owner is long gone, and yet I feel the strangest thing- simultaneously connected and disconnected. I am in possession of something that unnamed girl loved, just as reading Anne's diary, and there's an eerie sense of abandonment in the object being left behind but their owners having perished long before their time.

Granted, I'm Jewish, but I can't help but feel that simply by being alive and knowing of the Holocaust and of genocides in general, I am doing them a disservice. In the wake of tragedies like this, there is nothing to say, there are no words, so I'm not going to waste this review talking about the merits and downfalls of this book. It is not mine to critique- this is the diary of a real girl who really did live, and so pointing out its flaws is a vain pursuit, in that it is so inextricable from its owner, just like that topaz hairpin.

There is a time and a place for criticising memoirs without criticising their authors, but now is not the time nor the place. Suffice it to say that I feel like an awful person for rating this so low, but I will not budge on it. One of my core principles is that I judge books in and of themselves, and how they stand on their own- it is impossible to do so here, with the text so linked to the history.

I don't know what to do with The Diary of Anne Frank or that hairpin. They remind me to never forget the tragedy, but how could I anyway? I don't own them, and I never can- they're relics, relics that do not and cannot ever belong to anybody but their original owners, and so I suppose I'll always feel like I'm keeping watch over the prized possessions of two girls who are never coming back to retrieve them.


*He was a baker who became an army dentist when the bakers' union went on strike in the Great Depression. Quite an interesting fellow.

It took me forever to get through this book. It wasn't fun to read. At times it actually felt trivial and, honestly, just a little invasive. But it also feels very important.

It felt important to see how Jewish families were forced to live to avoid being found during one of the darkest times in Earth's history. It felt important to see the human condition still able to laugh and joke and have stupid meaningless arguments even under such terrible circumstances. It felt important to see the honest feelings of a teenage girl as she lived her final years as no one should, but especially not as a teenager with so few other experiences should.

I think part of the reason it took me so long to get through was that Anne's perspective was difficult to read, knowing in advance how it would end. It's also still something I'm getting used to that I can't read books about teenagers without thinking about it from the perspective of a father. I wasn't placing myself in her shoes, so much as her dad's. It's a weird way to read this type of book.

I'm glad I read it. I do think everyone should, but it's difficult to be too adamant about pushing that because I do think it's a hard read.

As Anne chronicles both the outside news and the mundane life she has in hiding, there is always a growing sense of dread at the sword of Damocles hanging over each person she mentioned. With her hopeful sentiments I am left uncomfortable with the knowledge this was a child. One that would die under terrible circumstances and that image paired with the girl who is excited about her first kiss and fights with her family leaves me haunted. This is a truly important work that will always remind you of the good and terrible humanity is capable of.

This was really good, and sad.