2025-03-27-brainstuff-anne-frank

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
Anne Frank's story of fear and laughter, of teen angst
and young love, of unspeakable horror and unbreakable hope is
as gripping and relevant in today's volatile world as it

(00:24):
was when she wrote it in nineteen forty two through
nineteen forty four, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Her diary was first published in Dutch, the language in
which she wrote, in nineteen forty seven. It's now been
translated into more than seventy languages and has sold more
than thirty five million copies. It's a testament to the story,

(00:46):
one that's both personal and universal, and it's important to
the historical record. It's equally a tribute to the storyteller.
From the time that The Diary of Anne Frank was
first published, skulls have poured over it, compared its different versions,
dissected every page, every entry, every passage, to put Anne

(01:07):
and her work into appropriate perspectives. In doing so, new
images of the author have slowly emerged. She's morphed from
a wide eyed and precocious child, but caught in one
of history's most tragic episodes, to a curious teen on
the cusp of adulthood and an exceptional young writer discovering
herself in a world unhinged. Before the article this episode

(01:31):
is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with historian Edna
Friedberg of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as she said,
Anne's story has changed in that it's acquired more texture
and nuance over the decades to have her not just
be some sort of beatified martyr, but a teenaged girl
with mixed emotions who could possibly be annoying and a

(01:52):
little arrogant. People now have discovered sections that had been
edited before about her blooming sexuality, but all sorts of
things that just make her more of a human being
and less of an archetype. Today, let's talk about some
of the less familiar details of Anne Frank's story. One
piece that may be forgotten is that it begins as

(02:13):
an immigrant story. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany,
in nineteen twenty nine, Anne and her family fled to
Amsterdam in the summer of nineteen thirty three, as Adolf
Hitler's Nazi regime came to power in the Netherlands, she
entered school and learned to speak Dutch. Her father Otto,
opened a small business. The Franks built a new life,

(02:37):
but in May of nineteen forty, with Germany continuing their
march through Europe, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and Anne's
life was thrown into new turmoil. She was ordered into
a Jewish only school, and, like all Jewish people under occupation,
made to live under separate and strict laws. A couple
of years later, as most of the world descended into war,

(02:58):
the Nazis called anne older sister Margo back to Germany,
supposedly to work in a so called labor camp. Fearing
the worst, Auto moved the entire Frank family himself, his wife, Edith, Margo,
and Anne into hiding in a secret layer of rooms
in the back of his business. The date was July

(03:19):
sixth of nineteen forty two. It's there, in the secret
annex on a canal in Amsterdam, that Anne, her family,
and four other Jewish people spent the next two years
hiding from the Nazis. It's there that Anne, who had
turned thirteen just before slipping into hiding, wrote the bulk
of her diary, how Stuffworks. Also spoke with Maureen MacNeil,

(03:44):
who spent nearly seven years as the director of Education
at the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York.
She said, my own reaction as a teenager who wanted
to be a writer, she really was committed to personal transformation.
You can see that in her writing she wrestled with
structural injustice, and in the midst of that she refused

(04:05):
to live in a world without love. All of that
introspection is evident early on in Anne's writing. Here, just
weeks before her move into the Secret Annex, and describes
a typical school day drama. She wrote, our entire class
is quaking in its boots. The reason, of course, is

(04:26):
the upcoming meeting in which the teachers decide who will
be promoted to the next grade and who will be
kept back. If you ask me, there are so many
dummies that about a quarter of the class should be
kept back. But teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth.
Maybe this time they'll be unpredictable in the right direction
for a change. Once in the Secret Annex, Anne's diary

(04:47):
served as a way to both pass the time and
hone her burgeoning skills as a writer and as a
friend and confidante. She often addressed her entries to a
series of friends, both real and imaginary, such as her
school friend Jack Leane and a character from a popular
novel series named Kitty, as well as other characters of
her own invention. She covered in often harsh details, the

(05:11):
seemingly mundane that run ins with her mother and squabbles
with others. In the annex she was blushingly honest about
her own insecurities, and typically for a kid her age,
wondered about her own looks and her emerging sexuality. In
passages kept from the original published version, as she described

(05:31):
in great detail her changing body. In pages only recently
revealed of Anne had covered them with brown paper, she
offered thoughts on sex and prostitution, and as the months
in hiding wore on, she wrote achingly of falling in
love with a fellow hideaway, Peter van Pells. At least

(05:51):
three versions of the diary exist, the first, of course,
being the diary as Anne originally wrote it. The second
is an edit of her own making, as she hoped
to publish a book based on the diary, spurred partially
by a Dutch announcement in March of nineteen forty four
that officials were looking to collect personal accounts from the occupation.
In this version, she removed some of the earlier and

(06:14):
harsher parts of her diary, especially the entries on her
love for Peter and some of the more stringent criticism
of her mother. The third version is a further edit
created by Anne's father Auto after her death and the
war's end, when he decided to try to get it published.
The third version is the most popularly known, and it's

(06:36):
a bit whitewashed. For example, it does not include Ann's
references to her developing curiosity about sex, which would have
been especially controversial in the nineteen forties and fifties. Scattered
throughout the diary, mixed in with the every day is
an acute recognition of the horrors that existed outside the

(06:56):
secret annex. Anne described a permeator fear in her family's
prison and wrestled with the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
In an entry in January of nineteen forty three, she wrote,
I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the
war has brought, but I'd only make myself more miserable.

(07:16):
All we can do is wait as calmly as possible
for it to end. A Jews and Christians alike are waiting.
The whole world is waiting, and many are waiting for death.
Friedberg said, I think part of what makes her diary
so powerful and resident for so many people has to
do with the circumstances in which she writes it. And

(07:38):
by that I don't mean the Holocaust, but because she
was in a cloistered hiding place for so long, her
diary is her constant companion. They're in this attic, they
are terrified, they're also taken out of life. That gives
a clarity of voice. In early April of nineteen forty four,

(07:58):
Anne wrote, when I write, I can shake off all
my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived. But
and that's a big question, will I ever be able
to write something great? Will I ever become a journalist
or a writer? I hope so oh, I hope so
very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all

(08:20):
my thoughts, ideals and fantasies. On August first of nineteen
forty four, more than two years after going into hiding
in the secret annex, Anne's awareness of herself and her
place in the world may have been at its peak.
She wrote about a personality split into a flippant and

(08:40):
fun loving on the outside, but purer, deeper, and finer
on the inside. She wrote, I keep trying to find
a way to become what I'd like to be and
what I could be if only there were no other
people in the world. That was the last entry Ann's diary.

(09:02):
Three days later, on the morning of August fourth of
nineteen forty four, the Nazis discovered the eight people hiding
in the Secret Annex and sent them to the Auschwitz
concentration camp in Poland, where Edith died in January of
nineteen forty five. Margo and Ann were transferred to the
bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In February of nineteen

(09:24):
forty five, just two months before the Allies liberated bergen Belsen,
Margo and Ann died as well. Margo was nineteen and
Anne was fifteen years old. Immediately after the war, Otto,
the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, returned to Amsterdam
and recovered Anne's diaries. Two years later, he first published

(09:48):
his slightly edited version. Friedberg said Ann's story resonates today
for a few reasons. One is because of the power, clarity,
and authenticity of her voice. The second is because you
feel that she almost made it. The Frank family and
the other four Dutch Jews in hiding with them survived

(10:10):
for two years because of the bravery and sustained support
of others non Jews. That is inspiring, but the tragedy
is that someone betrayed them. She almost lived to see liberation.
That is another part of what makes her story so
appealing to people. They see in her the symbol of
a missed chance at redemption, a missed chance at a

(10:32):
happy ending, a gnawing questions surrounding Anne and her friends
and family, and the secret annex remains eighty years later.
Who did turn them in? In the twenty teens, a
group of cold case investigators led by a former FBI

(10:52):
agent delved into the question, and they published their findings
in a book in twenty twenty two, But it seems
to have raised more questions than it answered. Many theories abound,
other groups are still looking into it. We may never know,
and other aspects of the story are still developing. In

(11:12):
July of twenty eighteen, a Researchers at the Anne Frank
House in Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum revealed
that before going into hiding in the secret annex, Otto
tried to emigrate with his family to America, only to
be stymied by stringent American immigration laws at the time.
Some subjects and aspects of Anne's writing are bleak, the

(11:37):
dual threats of bigotry and fascism, the plight of immigrants
and refugees, the terrors of war. Anne grappled with those horrors,
and the world still faces them today. Yet Anne also
wrote of love and understanding. She wrote of hope. McNeil said,

(11:59):
when she was looking at the blank page, she wasn't
just a girl, she wasn't just a chatterbox. She wasn't
just a refugee. She was a human being wanting to
make a difference and willing to take the risk to
put it on the page. So her dream came true.
She is in the Western literary canon. Her work is
just as important as Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman or

(12:21):
anybody else. Anne never got a chance to live the
life that she dreamed of, but all of these years later,
her words endure. Today's episode is based on the article
Anne Frank's Diary is Still Spilling Its Secrets on how

(12:42):
stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is
production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klin. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.