The Diary That Refuses to End: There it was. A thick brown book with a black and white picture of a girl smiling into the camera. It was probably plagiarised, but it didn’t matter. After years of reading about it from third sources I finally had it — The Diary of a Young Girl. Mind you, this wasn’t an ordinary young girl. This was a girl who yearned to live an ordinary life in the most extraordinary of scenarios, the Second Great War. As I skimmed through the crusty pages, it felt like a journey through time. A girl, unaware of her impending doom, struggles to survive while I remain conscious of the horrific fate that awaits her.
Right after moving into the annexe, the Franks found the sound of the ticking clock annoying. Anne referred to it as a faithful friend, not finding it unpleasant at all, as she believed it was a way of sneaking life into the annexe, making it more comfortable. Despite being hopeful and optimistic in general, she loathed being indoors and yearned to see people — while being scared of sounds at the same time. It’s a clash of emotions and circumstances, with the family moving closer to their final departure. As the family settled into their life in the annexe, had quiet meals, learnt, quarrelled, and got intimidated by rats — the constant threat of discovery mingled over their heads as they listened to the radio, read newspapers, or just paid attention to the faint sounds coming from outside at night.
The Holocaust seemed to get more and more horrifying as the months passed and the war escalated. The same hopeful Anne saw “being gassed” as the quickest way to die. I noticed a shift in her perspective of time; she’s a faithful friend when the idea is to eventually escape the annexe, but when it’s death, she prefers the fastest way to embrace it. A sense of defiance along with dismay could be sensed at that point — a feeling that I and many others can relate to in the present day when injustice reaches its peak and the world doesn’t seem to bat an eye.
The Diary That Refuses to End
The whole book is filled with contrast and contradictions. All was well in the annexe, but not quite so outside it. Anne wrote of green and grey army lorries moving along and Nazi soldiers doing door-to-door enquiries to find Jewish families. Her perspective got more relatable; while she was grateful for her safety, she felt wicked sleeping in a warm bed while others suffered. I couldn’t help but think of how all of this is merely by luck: being caught or not being caught, being stuck in a warzone or not being stuck in a warzone. The great wars may have ended, but this contrast still exists in the world.
I was appalled by how she was full of hope instead of just being full of rage, but by April 1944, Anne was disillusioned to the extent that she couldn’t imagine the end of the war; perhaps this is what made her write her aspirations: having a role beyond the domestic duties unlike the women she grew up seeing, becoming a writer, and continuing the hobby that she finds therapeutic. She expressed the desire to go on living even after she dies — perhaps already sensing her end. Under normal circumstances, all of these goals are achievable, but when luck intervenes and you’re a child stuck in a warzone — the situation is almost the opposite.
The conditions continued to get worse as the sound of machine guns and air raids became a regular routine and Turkey entering the war was the only form of “excitement”. While Anne was almost enraged at the blind “nationalism” shown by a soldier who was “moved” because he was able to shake hands with the Führer, I noticed the irony of it all — how mindsets are manufactured to the point that individuals completely lose their sense of conscience and their sole goal becomes to please the manufacturer of that very mindset.
I finally made it to her last diary entry — 1st August, 1944. It wasn’t a final goodbye to her “dear kitty”. It wasn’t a happy ending. It wasn’t a cliffhanger either. It was just a collection of thoughts — like any other human. The inside vs the outside. The cheeky Anne vs the composed Anne. The Anne that wanted to exist vs the one that existed. No wonder this entry began with the phrase “Little bundle of contradictions”, and her final words were as follows: “I can’t keep that up if I’m watched to that extent; I start by getting snappy, then unhappy, and finally I twist my heart round again so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would like to be, if… there weren’t any other people living in the world.”
If there weren’t any other people living in the world.
I couldn’t help but think of how the world never progressed when it came to stopping the forced extinction of fellow members of the human race, how condemnation and mourning in a few years win over actually taking action when a problem exists. Whatever occurred around 1944 can never justify the atrocities happening in the present day — and the fact it can’t doesn’t invalidate the pain of those events either. The world has always been a cruel place — and we have always been a hopeless society.
