Reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl in 2021
I wasn’t expecting this to be the first post I’d make this year, but I figured there was no timelier moment to read the diary of Anne Frank than now. So much about this book resonated with me during quarantine, the overwhelming sense that nothing would be normal again, the crushing despair at being confined to a small space, and the flagrant return of fascism to our modern day hellscape makes The Diary of a Young Girl sobering reading.
I’ve heard it said that fascists like Varg Vikernes are created by reading certain books like Mein Kampf in the wrong order, and after reading The Diary of a Young Girl I can believe that, many edgelords try to read Mein Kampf first and it scrambles their brains. Reading The Diary of a Young Girl captures a lot of gradual changes as Amsterdam falls to fascism, the fact that Jews were all of a sudden not permitted to ride the tram or go to specific ice cream parlours, the forced yellow star wearing and rounding up of Jewish families who were sent to concentration camps. We hear rumours and whispers about the camps from the adults in Anne Frank’s life confined to the Secret Annexe, as Anne’s Jewish neighbours are captured and sent there, meanwhile the main focus of the Anne Frank diary is on her life in the Secret Annexe during her experiences in hiding. One of the small things that stuck with me is the diary entry where she had Chanukah with only ten minutes of candlelight because of a candle shortage, but because they were able to sing the song it didn’t matter. Most of all I was surprised that it was the black market coupons for butter and other groceries that stuck with me the most, occasionally a burglar steals them or the coupon book sellers are arrested by the cops, Anne Frank mentions she is happy when the supplier of her family’s coupon books are released from jail.
The Diary of a Young Girl is depressing, because you know this story doesn’t have a happy ending from the beginning thanks to the foreword, where Otto Frank is the sole survivor of the Holocaust in Anne’s family. There’s a fair bit of detail I wasn’t expecting like Anne mentioning she isn’t allowed to flush the lavatory lest the noise be detected from downstairs, in fact there’s a lot of disgusting toilet talk in this book which cements how desperate and trapped Anne is during her self-exile into the Secret Annexe. You read her hopes and dreams which will never come true, you see her develop feelings for a boy and when she has her first period, all part of growing up in occupied Holland. Radio broadcasts in German and Dutch inform her of the outside world and how the dictators of the day are trying to eradicate Jews like cockroaches from their countries, without the dogwhistles of modern despots to soften the blow of their anti-Semitism. The propaganda from the German front as Hitler interviews wounded soldiers is condemned by Anne for the misleading trash it is, Anne amuses herself by studying different languages and reading a variety of books which are made available to her such as a collection of Greek myths she’s rather attached to.
Anne Frank’s family had to uproot themselves from Germany to Amsterdam only to be confined there for the duration of the war (until they were discovered), hiding behind a bookcase upstairs from a business office where criminals often broke into the premises and stole things. There are plans made by the other members of the family which never come to fruition, wartime rationing weighs heavy on them and the diminished expectations of the Annexe makes life in lockdown in 2021 look like paradise in comparison. At least I can leave my house wearing a mask without the Gestapo carting me off to Auschwitz. Speaking of which, photographers captured an image of a man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie at the Capitol building riot in America, reinforcing how important it is to remember the Holocaust as its dwindling survivors perish - leaving the maintenance of their memory up to us. Anne often wonders when it will be safe to be Jewish again, or when God’s chosen people will be chosen for something good instead of persecution. She never lived to see the end of the war, and she became a symbol for the Jewish people defying capture under deplorable conditions. Anne Frank is an icon of strength who we see as a normal teenage girl in these pages, obsessing over film stars from movies she isn’t able to see in her confinement. Certain names of classmates are left as initials to protect their identities, but I did laugh when Anne Frank dissed Rob Cohen as “an obnoxious, two-faces, lying, snivelling little twit” in one of the most famous published diaries of all time. Bet Rob Cohen feels embarrassed now! I laughed at times when Anne was disgusted at her father talking about farting and the lavatory, not everything in this diary paints a flattering picture of the Frank family and I can understand why certain passages were omitted for years. A few fragments of Anne Frank admiring the breasts of women in her art textbooks and longing for a girlfriend have been cited as evidence Anne Frank was bisexual at least, these confessions are a short passage but they sure made an impact on Tumblr. I expected Anne Frank to be presented to us as this untouchable saint, but the text displays her as a human being who is sometimes at breaking point.
She writes an unkind letter to her father, which he regards as one of the most hurtful things she has ever done, and threatens to throw it into the fireplace. The very idea of Anne Frank being a spoiled brat even despite her circumstances is quite hard to process, but she does act up sometimes in her Annexe and gets in trouble for being a chatterbox. It’s not called The Diary of a Mature, Patient Adult Woman after all, and we see her frustrations laid bare for good or ill. She yearns for the freedom to be a real teenage girl, a freedom that perhaps she never finds in the Annexe but achieves it in the pages of her diary. Rather than being forgotten by history, Anne Frank lives forever in these pages, published after the war ended to an international acclaim. She makes Popeye jokes about all the spinach she’s eating, remarks that Rin Tin Tin was a big hit with her friends and how she wanted to call her own dog that if she ever got one. Anne Frank is an inspiration to millions through her writings, which capture the best and worst of humanity in print, I enjoyed reading it even though there were mournful passages that were hard to get through.
I had a mental breakdown in 2019 which I’m still recovering from, where I was diagnosed with bipolar after a manic episode, and in the middle of that I was trying to review the movie Lords of Chaos based on the black metal biography of the same name. I struggled to articulate the merit of this movie weighed against the resurgence of fascism and the burning of churches which this new biopic inspired, and I was dismayed to see Varg Vikernes bragging about how he killed Euronymous was somehow allowed a platform on YouTube. Varg was a habitual line-stepper on his channel, laughing at the psychological evaluation paperwork forced onto him by the prison system in a video which has now been taken off the site. Hours of footage of this horrible man revelling in his fascist ideology swept away by YouTube’s terms of service agreement which I watched as research for my Lords of Chaos review I never got around to finishing wore on my soul, to an extent that I had to go to Red Eye Records in the city to buy Rick Moranis’ klezmer album My Mother’s Brisket to cleanse Varg’s fashy vibes from my home. Listening to My Mother’s Brisket bolstered my belief that these edge-lord fascists who continue to ponder “The Jewish Question” are trash who want to eliminate a people who have done little to earn such vitriol against them, by the sound of My Mother’s Brisket they seem like a lovely ethnic group who just want to eat kosher and live-blog the bris.. Anti-Semitism is a big problem in the metal community and although I do own a Burzum CD, I am mortified by the actions of Varg and his hateful views that were radicalising people like the Christchurch shooter. Reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl has radicalised me against fascism’s advocates in a sense, as it documents the slow creep of fascist rhetoric against Jews and how this abominable movement can spread fast over Europe. Anne Frank has given me the strength to try again with Lords of Chaos, now that I have additional historic context for what Varg is arguing for and how despicable his vision for the future truly is.
2021 was in many ways a perfect time to read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, as we’re all in lockdown at the moment and are horrified by the invasion of the Capitol by Q-Anon supporters who wear fur headdresses with Norse insignia tattoos, they beat up cops with an American flag. Anne Frank’s fearless spirit of defiance remains with us through her diary, there to motivate us to be better than we are at the moment and to stand strong against the brownshirts of today. Anne Frank is the hero we all need to be at this present time, and reading her diary is something I should have done a long time ago in school - although we read Peter Goldsworthy’s Maestro instead to learn about the Holocaust. I visited the Sydney Jewish Museum twice, and was greeted by two different Holocaust survivors, one male and one female. I was fortunate to meet such wise elder mentors before they passed on, and the Holocaust tour is a mandatory element of the Jewish Museum’s educational element. Thinking about Australia’s offshore detention makes me angry because it’s clear our current Liberal government has learned nothing from the Shoah except how to demonise refugees for political gain, we have no high ground to stand on. Anne Frank shall be remembered as brave throughout history, whereas the gutless politicians who sleepwalk into fascism will be remembered as cowards who enabled the worst xenophobic tendencies in our national character to fester out of control. May Anne’s memory be a blessing.
