Anne Frank!  Street art photo by TIA, CC

Today marks Anne Frank’s 85th birthday. I don’t know about you, but that fact blows my mind. Anne Frank, had she survived the Holocaust, would have been a couple years older than my dad. If she’d had children, they would be my generation.

I read the book when I was in ninth grade at the recommendation of my friend Lisa, my favourite book pimp. Of course, at the tender age of 14, I didn’t have a deep understanding of what Anne’s tragically short life and indescribably horrible death meant.  I remember the impact of the book more than the actual content.

Anne’s Legacy to Me

Shortly after reading Anne Frank’s  The Diary of a Young Girl, I became a life-long journaller, and it was a life-saving decision. Seriously–my diaries were my lifeline in those angst ridden adolescent years. I chronicled every insecurity and indiscretion, analysed every crush and heartache…  I cringe to think what dreadful content I’d find…if I still had them.

Ah, yes. Hard to believe, but I let those babies slip out of my hand. One of the costs of living the ex-pat life is being out of the country when your childhood bedroom is transformed into a guest room. My library of children’s classics (including a gazillion Nancy Drews), my artwork, scrapbooks and journals all went to the town dump. Gulp! Thank goodness one volume of my diary was written mostly in Italian!

I still remember the some of the covers. The first one was a Hallmark diary with a key. The next was a gift from my Aunt Joy. It had an olive-green corduroy cover. My Aunt Mim gave me a beautiful gold  one. (That’s the one I used in Italy). Nowadays I use Moleskine cahiers and I keep a digital diary (on an app called Maxjournal).

Anne’s diary had a red and white checked fabric cover with a brass lock. It was really an autograph book but she wanted it for a journal. Here’s a picture of her diary from the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. My diaries have lots of glued in bits too!

Dairy by Heather Cowper, CC

Reading The Diary of a Young Girl also ignited a passion for Jewish literature (or books about Jewish people). Here are a few I highly recommend:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
• The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
• Snow in August by Pete Hamill
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok

I read that Anne decided she wanted to be journalist so she could “live on.” Here are the words she entered in her diary on 5 April, 1944, just over seventy years ago:

“I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!”

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank