The Diary of Anne Frank – an Inspiration for Generations

This book is about survival. It's about prejudice. It teaches how there is nobility in human compassion. And it's also about a young girl trying to survive adolescence. Many teens can relate to such a book because Anne goes through all of the normal adolescent trials in life, even though she's locked up. Anne has a difficult relationship with her mother, as most young girls do. She often says things to hurt her mother, yet she can't help her temper and continues to do so as time goes on. She also goes through the beginning stages of love. She and Peter enjoy each other’s company, and that leads to a very close bond that many teens experience in their lives. Anne also struggles with her identity. She finds through her writing that there are two Annes: a good one and a bad one. She longs throughout the story to find someone who will relate to her. All of these feelings she has can relate to most teenagers, no matter what year it is. It is a universal book. Although it teaches of the Holocaust and what the Jews went through, it reaches out to the reader to make the story more realistic and believable. We never want such a historical blunder to happen again. Anne’s last words in the beloved play and film were her most famous quote, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Those words, however, come before the end of the diary, and were written as part of a larger passage exploring the nature of good and evil and grappling with the horror she saw unfolding around her.

The detailed diary of Anne Frank gave us insights into what life was like for Jews who were in hiding, Anne often spoke her feelings and told things as they really were. '...I'm honest and tell people right to their faces what I think, even when it's not very flattering. I want to be honest; I think it gets you further and also makes you feel better about yourself', which was saved by one of the helpers in the Secret Annex, Miep Gies, and published by her father, Otto Frank, who survived the war, Anne’s voice was heard when millions of others were silenced. She was a young woman attempting to flee persecution, and her life was tragically cut short. Along with 6 million other Jewish people, Anne and the majority of her family were murdered by the German Nazi regime for being different. They were victims of evil. They were victims of hatred.

Yet, despite this, Anne’s words continue to offer hope. They are words that echo through generations, reaching people of all backgrounds and cultures. They instill in us the determination to educate future generations on the horrors of the past; to pass on the ideals of freedom from fear and freedom from want; and to act when we see injustices taking place.

People continue to connect with her. In many ways she is an ordinary teenager, writing about ordinary teenage things. Yet she is an extraordinary person, not only because she wrote these things amid war and violence, but also because in this teenage girl, we find reflective wisdom and wit. She is a woman of inward strength and courage. And her words continue to inspire, to provide optimism and lift generations up.