Diary of Anne Frank
Pages: 1-283=283
Hannah Ledesma
7th Grade English
To some, faith is the key to making it through anything. To others, family is the only way to get past the rough times. Through any disaster, people are forced to make that choice. Without hope, faith, and family, you feel desperate, alone with no place to go.
Many people had to choose faith or family in the Holocaust. Many people were given no choice. Thousands of families were separated during this chaotic time. Many were placed in different parts of Concentration Camps, a place intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime during World War II. Others were forced into completely different camps, having no contact with their family and friends. Most people had no idea what conditions their family members were in, and others had no idea if the people they loved where even alive.
One of the youngest members of the Holocaust, famously known for her amazingly descriptive diary, Anne Frank was a normal teenage girl. Loving her Father, adoring her sister, and having a slightly tense relationship with her mother, Anne felt that she could make it though anything with them by her side. “Let the end come, even if it is hard; then at least we shall know whether we are finally going to win through or go under,” (Anne Frank, page 256). After 2 successful years of playing hide-and-seek with the Nazis, the game ended. Anne and her family were taken to German and Dutch Concentration Camps.
Life at the camps was never easy. Disease spread like termites, work was backbreaking, and food was limited. Making it through the days was no more difficult than painful. Because families were separated, like Anne’s family, many had no point of trying any longer. Many forfeited their brave fight, because they had nothing to fight for.
“We all live, but we don’t know the why or the wherefore.” (Anne Frank, page 270). The only way I can truly understand what Anne had to go through is to put myself in a situation, where I have no idea where my mom is, no clue as to where my father is or if he is even still alive, and alone with my sick sister in a disease-threatened, vicious, small room with a bundle of ill strangers. Personally, I will never be able to understand the decisions she had to make even after her sister died. After her sister does die, she had a choice to make. To use all the hope and will she had left to make it through, in hopes that her father or mother would still be alive, or finally choose to lose the long battle she’s been part of for years. As a 15 year old, this was probably one of the toughest decisions she had to make. Anne chose to let typhus conquer her, and was finally put out of the cold, long final days as a lonely young girl.
Hatred is the ugliest trait, and sadly, it’s still common today. You can never really know what hatred is until you have experienced it on one of the highest levels. In Anne’s diary, she decides to go in depth, guiding us through the sights, noises, feelings, and images of the hatred and discrimination she had to suffer . And by doing that, she is one of the famously known victims of Hitler’s terrible, disgusting, Holocaust.