Anne Frank would be 75 today

[CShine]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The grainy black-and-white photos offer an intimate look at a prewar middle-class European family. The girls celebrate birthdays, play in sandboxes and on the beach, hug a teddy bear. The images reveal no hint of impending catastrophe. Had she survived a Nazi concentration camp, the smaller girl in the photos, Anne Frank, would have turned 75 today. The exhibition of nearly 70 photographs, many of them never previously published or publicly displayed, is the focus of 75th birthday events at the Anne Frank House, the former canal house where Anne's family hid for 25 months. It is where the teenager wrote the diary that became the human voice of the Holocaust before the family was betrayed and captured in August 1944.

Her birthday coincided with the widely celebrated 60th anniversary of D-Day, providing a sad reminder of those for whom liberation came too late. The 15-year-old Anne died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen camp in March 1945, just weeks before British troops arrived at the gate.

Theaters, Holocaust museums, churches and Jewish clubs around the world are commemorating the day with readings from The Diary of Anne Frank or performances of the play based on the journal. The Cleveland Opera is performing music inspired by the story. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews -- 70 percent of the community -- were deported to concentration camps after Germany occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Most died in gas chambers, and were among the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide.

"It's amazing when you think how much interest the diary created. That little girl -- and she was only a little girl when she went into hiding -- would be so shocked if she would have known," said Carol Ann Lee, a biographer of Anne and her father, Otto Frank.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/world/2622969

[proud patriot]

1. Her Diary was one of the first chapter books I read as a child

I'll always remember her spirit

[Southsideirish]

5. I looked a lot like her at her age - it really shook me up as I began to

overly identify with her and her ordeal. I thought people were going to come and get me and my family -I guess it was the whole paranoia of the 50's era.

[Mnemosyne]

9. I read it in fifth grade

and her spirit helped me thru hard times often.

[playahata1]

2. Has anyone ever cleared up the debate over whether or not

the "Diary" is a forgery? I remember that there was a huge argument over this some years ago.

[donsu]

3. I read her when it was first published

have never heard it was a fake

[struggle4progress]

4. Some Neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers are still out there.

I've never heard any credible report that the diary is fake. Who, in the dreadful and hungry aftermath of WWII, would have had energy to waste forging such documents, anyway?

[playahata1]

6. The Holocaust deniers may not have come out of the woodwork

immediately after the war, but they have certainly been out and about in more recent times. In the latter period, there is no doubt that they have had the means and the leisure to attack "Diary."

[struggle4progress]

16. Disgusting, isn't it?

[Jack Rabbit]

11. That's hosrsepucky

The people who will tell you that The Diary of Anne Frank is a forgery are the same people who will tell you that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is authentic.

[Jade Fox]

12. ??? The family friend who helped hide the Frank's and saved Anne's diary..

is still alive. Her name is Miep Gies.

The only controversy I have ever heard about Frank's diary is how her
father edited it. The complete diary is quite long. She was locked up
for over two years with not much to do, and the complete diary's length
attests to that.

[playahata1]

7. My grandfather is the same age as Anne Frank would have been

were she still alive.

[stevielizard]

8. When you get to the end of the tour

The last room when you tour the house just is filled with translations of the diary- you see copies in Arabic and Chinese and Russian, etc.

It's so sad but also uplifting as well- her story has been passed down and so she lives on.

[Jack Rabbit]

10. I still believe in spite of everything that people are good at heart

-- Anne Frank

[senseandsensibility]

13. My first teaching job

was a middle school English position at a very economically challenged public school with a student population of almost 100% recent Mexican immigrants. We read Diary, and they really got it. They were so full of questions about Anne, her situation, and the times in which she lived. Their lives were full of challenges, many of them solely due to their race, and they could relate to that. We were all in tears at the end. Now, many years later, I still consider reading Diary with those thirteen year olds one of the most rewarding teaching experiences I've had. And I know that they remember it too.

[The Blue Knight]

14. Anne Frank never lived.

You've been lied to.

[Violet_Crumble]

15. Yes she did...

For 15 years....

Violet...