Anne's Movie Moment !!

“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.” 

 ~ Anne Frank ~ 

On August 4th, 1944,  Anne Frank was arrested with her family & sent to Westerbork en route to Auschwicz, then on to Bergen Belsen. She did not survive the War, but her writing did. I watched this last night, Very Moving. Made me cry huge tears & that is why I decided to post today (Ahead of Movie Monday & After Film Friday) .... Although it is not what I intended to blog at all!!! 

The Diary of Anne Frank is amazing for many reasons. It is remarkably easy to read, giving an extraordinarily intimate and detailed view of the thoughts of a teenage girl, revealing her cognitive patterns and concerns.   Whether she knew it or not, she used the diary as self-therapy to try to find some solace and reason in the midst of a world full of irreconcilable contradictions. She used writing to define her personal moral and ethical questions, and to articulate the best answers and definitions she could find. For example, as seen above, she defines multiple (equally accurate and co-existing) definitions for the word "contradictions.” In the midst of her insane world, she never stopped trying to improve her reasoning, knowledge, and character.

The Diary of Anne Frank reveals a brilliant mind trying to find “truth” amidst overwhelmingly contradictary data, forces, and ideologies.  Or make sense of life, like any teenager ... and to 'find herself' to boot.  I read her diary as a child and loved it & identified with it, in equal measure and with Anne, her teenage dilemmas and her approach to life.  Filled with Dreams and Destiny.  Her work exudes modesty and self deprecation. Why do some of the finest female artists so often feel this way about themselves? About their art?

“Anyone could ramble on and leave big spaces between the words, but the trick was to come up with convincing arguments to prove the necessity of talking.”  
~ June 21, 1942 ... 'The Diary of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank ~

If you’ve never read the Diary of Anne Frank, you may mistakenly think the diary is only interesting and relevant because Anne later died in the Shoah. It IS an essential & important work for Shoah Studies. But if you’ve read the Diary of Anne Frank, you may agree that the work is meritorious completely independent of her subsequent history. Her diary is a remarkable record of a young woman developing mentally, sexually, and spiritually. And for that reason too it should be required reading for girls as they develop into womanhood. Even without her holocaustic demise, her diary would still have tremendous independent worth ~ it is timeless and universal in its juvenile perspectives and thoughts.

Her loss is a loss for the world. While I posit that her precious work stands on its own without context, it is the context which makes the tragic destruction of such innocent beauty a thousand times more terrible. No, actually one & a half million times more terrible, for that is the number of children who were slaughtered in the shoah or six million times more terrible as six million talented and brilliant Jews were similarly slaughtered.

Sometimes tragedies are felt and recorded in the words & actions of Kings and Nations. Sometimes equal tragedies can be experienced in the heart and mind of just one girl.  And Anne's Diary is such a record.  She says in her diary .... "I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. 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!"  

I would posit that her writing achieves this for sure.  This movie will move you, shock you, make you cry and mostly just inspire you.

“I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.  Those who have courage and faith shall never perish in misery” 
~ Anne Frank ~

It is the Movie in Full on Youtube which follows ......  And this is without doubt a worthily made movie of her life. The best one out there, & I'll bet it makes you cry!