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 her, she tries to hold onto hope. She writes, “I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Amidst uncertainty and fear, she writes of her dreams, friendships and humour. Reading her entries made me feel like that little boy in the film – momentarily shielded from the horrifying tragedy happening outside.

What intrigued me the most was the significance of the prejudices- not only the political-antisemitic prejudices which propelled holocaust on a larger scale, reducing her identity to that of a Jewish girl but also the ones she suffered quietly inside the Secret Annexe- immature, emotional, self-centred and difficult. And these are from her own family and from those who shared the hiding. She bares her naked self in the diary about the difficulties of being silenced and judged wrongly.  

Throughout the book she writes about herself as the combination of two different versions. A funny, talkative Anne who is generally stereotyped as immature, emotional and difficult to be with. There is another version of hers, which is contemplative and wishes to have serious conversation about things and a dire need to be treated like an adult and not a child. She can’t afford to bring this version out, because she is often disregarded as being silly.  Maybe Anne’s greatest struggle was not only against Nazi prejudice but also against the labels imposed on her by those who loved her. (Her own father Otto Frank, after her death upon publishing the dairy reveals at BBC Interview that he has never known her potential to be this serious) This is quite heart breaking because even the closest to us, may not fully know us. (I’m sure the responsibility lies on both the sides) While History saw a Jewish girl, the adults in the Annex often saw her as a difficult teenager. She preferred her diary, “Because paper has more patience than people” and it became her only refuge where she exposes her real self. She retaliates in her diary against the imposed labels, “People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn't stop you from having your own opinion.” I found her conviction on life rather contagious, “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

And I think, this aspect of individuality makes her diary timeless. It is not just a testimony of the horrors of holocaust but also a contemplative exploration of adolescence itself.  She doesn’t want to be confined as the Jewish girl or the talkative daughter or the difficult teenager. She insists on being seen for her entirety. And perhaps even decades later her voice continues to resonate- not only for being an authentic symbol in history but also for reminding us how unmindful stereotyping and prejudices can profoundly shape a young life. 

(The same content can also be accessed at medium.com/amelujanaki)