Beyond Labels: knowing Anne Frank, the Teenager
In my school days, we had an excerpt from The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. It was a yet another lesson for me then. Given the age and exposure, I had not known enough to process the entirety of the injustice that has happened to her and to the millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Reading the book several years later was completely a different experience. I realised there is more to Anne as an individual teenager than being revered as a historical symbol of Holocaust. Before becoming a most recognizable victim of history, she was simply an ambitious teenager- curious, inquisitive, argumentative, affectionate, urge to comprehend complex things, longing to be loved and understood. Her relentless optimistic nature reminded me of my favourite 1997 Italian film Life is Beautiful. In the film, a father conceives an elaborate game to conceal the real horror of the concentration camp from his four-year-old son. While Anne is fully aware of the perils that surround ...