It's hard to read this book and to not get caught up in the horror, even though it's just a simple girl telling her story. It's not an epic tale, one should never read this book for that reason. It's about life going on in the middle of a horror that can not be put into words. Even though they were ripped from normal life and were forced to live inside a part of a house without the chance to go outside, life continued. (People saying that they had it 'good' are gravely mistaken. In comparison to people dead, dying or suffering on the battlefield/camps, perhaps yes, compared to us? I dare those people to never vacate their homes for more than two years then! I'll even let them have GOOD plumbing, internet, the right to be LOUD and GOOD food.) This girl is proof that life continues. We want to glorify everything about the wars, we need epic tales, bloodshed, horror and life-altering stories to remember that we can never let it get that far again. But it is only human that life continues in its simple elegance (that does not féél that simple to the subjects who endure it), that young people blossom, even in a world that wants to snuff them out.

Anne has made me frown a lot but she made me laugh too. She was only thirteen, fifteen at the most when she wrote all her thoughts. She had a sharp mind as well as a childish one. Would this book be any good if it had not this terrible background? I hardly think so. This story is special because of its background. It's the story of somebody who ALMOST survived. And to realise that she died only a few months before liberation is heartbreaking. These people - and so many others - have lost their lives for nothing. Pure waste.

Yet I am glad - in a way - that her mother did not survive the war. It already broke my heart how she wrote about her mother. Even though it is normal for youngsters to rebel against their parents, it would have destroyed that poor soul for reading the too hard words her daughter wrote. It must not have been easy for her father either. It made me resent Anne a little. But I firmly believe that she would regret her words later on when she grew to be a woman, if only she had gotten the chance.