Claudia is on page 280 of 496 of Tod und Teufel

Matthias is 43% done with Klara und die Sonne

"The power and the poignancy of The Diary of a Young Girl lies in a famous quote (sometimes attributed to Stalin):
”A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Our brains simply cannot visualize six million systematic murders. We have no way to put it into a context that reaches our emotions, our humanity. We understand that it is terrible, even evil, but that number alone fails to engage our emotional core with the reality of its horror.

And that is why this diary, written by a clever, precocious, and cheeky girl between the ages of 13 and 15 has become one of the most powerfully important documents in our literature. Because Anne Frank has become the human face of the Holocaust. Reading her diary enables us to emotionally understand the enormity of this horrific crime against humanity, and to feel the immensity of its human tragedy.

The circumstances in which the diary was written were extraordinary, and Anne (who dreamed of becoming a journalist and writer) obviously had a precocious talent. But otherwise, Anne Frank’s diary is just an ordinary example of those kept by many young teen girls. She used her diary as a confidant for her life’s details — she even named it, often addressing herself to Kitty, as if sharing with a trusted friend. Yet most of what she shared was no different than that of countless other teenage diarist. She wrote of conflict with her mother and older sister, frustrations of a youngest child being treated as immature. She confided her anxiousness about her approaching first period. She wrote about boys. She wrote about loneliness. She confided the dreams she had at night and her ambitions for the future. And she wrote freely of the irritants and amusements provided by those she shared her days with. She observed her own growth and change over time, and freely expressed both her fears and her hopes.

It was the circumstances under which Anne’s diary was composed that makes it remarkable. Most of the diary was written while Anne, her family, another Jewish family, and a single Jewish man were sharing cramped quarters hidden from the Gestapo. The fear of being discovered, the measures they had to take to maintain the secret of their hiding place, and a general understanding about what was happening to those Jews who hadn’t been able to escape or go into hiding, pervades this otherwise ordinary girl’s diary. Anne recorded all of that, together with the trauma and difficulties of living in forced intimacy with others, unable to go out or have any contact with the outside world beyond the few trusted helpers who helped to maintain them. Anne’s diary shows her growing into a young woman, with all its normal difficulties and experiences while being forced to cope with this extraordinarily difficult and frightening situation.

Of course, the true emotional gut punch of The Diary of a Young Girl is that, from the start, we know how Anne ended. History tells us that on August 4, 1944, the Gestapo invaded their hiding place, arresting all who were there. Anne spent the rest of her short life in concentration work camps, and died (probably of typhus) sometime in February or March of 1945. Her mother and sister Margo also died, leaving her father as the sole survivor of their family. Anne became a statistic, just one of some six million. But because of the remarkable diary she left behind, we can still see her smiling, mischievous human face, and through her, understand the enormity of the tragedy that was perpetrated on her, her family, and millions of others.

It is important to put history in context. Reading about Anne at this remove she can become historically remote. Anne wrote often in her diary of her dream of becoming a journalist and a writer. That was an ambitious goal for a teenage girl in 1944, even one not living in hiding in an occupied country. But Anne was born the same year as another girl with that same dream. Barbara Walters, the same age as Anne Frank, became a pioneer for women in journalism, rising to world wide fame for her journalistic achievements, and kicking open doors for women in journalism. Reading Anne’s obviously talented prose in her diary, and realizing she and Walters were of the same age, one is forced to wonder what a life Anne might have led if she had not been snuffed out prematurely in one of humanity’s most notorious mass crimes. That is also the power of this book — the power of that “what if” multiplied by millions. Anne Frank’s diary reminds us to Never Forget. "

Claudia is on page 269 of 496 of Tod und Teufel