Diaries of Anne Frank
Diaries of Anne Frank
Country | Netherlands |
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Repository | Anne Frank Foundation and Anne Frank House, Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
Section | Inscriptions on International Register |
Gender Dimension | Stories from women's perspective |
GEM | GEM 1– Gender Sensitive |
Description | The diary, written by the adolescent Anne Frank (1929-1945), records the experience of the two years starting in July 1942, that she and her father, mother, two sisters and four other Jewish people lived in hiding in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam during World War II. Anne writes about events but also about what she feels and thinks. She was rewriting her diaries into one book when the Secret Annex was discovered in August 1944. Her father was the only person in the Annex to survive the war and Anne died in 1945 in the Bergen-Besen concentration camp. The diary consists of a red and white chequered diary (where she kept her first diary entries from June to December 1942), two thick hardcover school exercise books (in which she continued her diary entries until August 1, 1944) and 360 loose sheets of thin copy paper she used to edit and rewrite her diary entries. Her diary has also become a powerful voice for all those Jewish people who suffered and died during World War II. The diary helps people learn about the Holocaust and understand the negative consequences of discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping. Anne Frank speaks to young people today in their language, so they can relate to her story and recognize their own problems. Anne Frank had aspirations to become a writer. She conceived the idea of editing her separate diaries into one ongoing story called “the Secret Annex” when the Minister of Education of the Dutch Government in exile called on the Dutch people to keep war diaries and documents. Some of Anne’s writings survived her discovery and in 1947 the first edition of the diary was published. Since then the book has been translated into more than 70 languages and is one of the best known books in the world. The documentary heritage was inscribed onto the Memory of the World international register in 2009. |
Reference | http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/register/full-list-of-registered-heritage/registered-heritage-page-2/diaries-of-anne-frank/ https://www.annefrank.org/nl/ Photo credit: © Anne Frank Foundation |
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