Dear Kitty: The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank’s Story and Things You Need to Know about Her Book

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank

The Holocaust is one of the darkest periods in history. Because of Adolf Hitler’s influence, the Nazis developed hatred toward races, specifically to Jews. Jews were exterminated like pests. They were round up and sent to concentration camps where they were forced to work to exhaustion, and then gassed, shot, or left to die.

Anne Frank was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl whose family tried to get away from the Nazi’s tyranny and incarceration by hiding in secret rooms. Anne kept a diary that depicts her experiences of the difficulties she went through.

A Quick Overview of the Diary of a Young Girl     

Anne Frank’s diary began on her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942, and ended quickly after her fifteenth. She started her diary by describing her typical girlhood experiences.

Anne and her family moved to the Netherlands to escape persecution in Germany. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, the Franks went into hiding. They moved into a small secret annex above Otto Frank’s, Anne’s father, office. Another family, the van Daans, and an acquaintance, Mr. Dussel, were with them.

In her diary, Anne often wrote about how isolated and lonely she felt. She wrote about how she has a difficult relationship with her mother whom she considers lacking in love and affection. Anne’s maturity can also be observed in her diary as she talks from her basic activities to deeper and more profound thoughts about humanity. She questioned why the Jews were being terminated, and she questioned her own identity.

Since August 1, 1944, no entry was found on Anne Frank’s diary. It is said that the Franks were betrayed, and were arrested by the Nazis on August 14, 1944. The Diary of a Young Girl ended abruptly leaving its readers probing about what happened between the days from her last diary entry to their captivity.

 Facts Revealed through Anne Frank’s Book

1. The “diary” she received for her thirteenth birthday was actually an autograph book. However, Anne Frank decided to make it as a journal instead. After using all the pages of her autograph, she switched to two notebooks and then resorted to a 360-page loose leaf paper.

2. The first edition of the diary was actually called Het Achterhius (The Back House).

3. Anne addressed her diary to a person named Kitty. Some scholars believe that Kitty is Anne’s prewar friend, Käthe “Kitty” Egyedi, and others believe that Anne got it from Joop ter Heul, Anne’s favorite book series, in which the title character’s best friend was named Kitty.

4. Anne Frank and her family were brought to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She lost her mother to starvation, her sister to typhus. (Three days after her sister’s death, Anne succumbed to typhus causing her death.)

5. Out of the eight people who went into hiding in the secret annex, only one survived—Otto Frank.

6. Miep Gies, one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide the Franks, was the one who found Anne Frank’s diaries. Gies collected the diaries in the hope of returning it to Anne. Gies gave it to Otto, and Otto submitted them for publication.

7. Anne Frank was an aspiring writer. Otto Frank published her diaries because he knows that it was what Anne had intended.

In her diary, Anne Frank does not only show the difficulties she had faced, but as well as the courage, wisdom, and hope in the face of adversity. She writes, “I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.”