How a young girl’s diary became an everlasting condemnation of the Holocaust.

Anne Frank, 12 June 1929 – early March 1945

Anne Frank is alive; she lives on in all of us….The writer Primo Levi describes this beautifully: “One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”

Page of Anne’s diary where she put her favorite photograph of herself

We don’t know the exact date of Anne Frank’s death, except that it was sometime in early March 1945. I will commemorate Anne during the whole month of March.

Why is her diary so very important?  Because it survived the horror of the Holocaust to stand as an eternal accusation against tyranny. Anne is the personification of the death of millions of innocent people who’s only “crime” was to be Jewish. Her diary also serves as an unshakable witness against Holocaust deniers who have actively and shamefully tried to discredit her diary as a “fake”. Anne’s diary is the David against the Nazi Goliath.

A very close friend of mine lives only a few houses away from the Anne Frank House on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht, where Anne and her family hid in the “Achterhuis”, the secret backside of the canal house. As the long lines of visitors who stand patiently in line in rain and wind to experience Anne’s world and atmosphere show, Anne’s message is not forgotten and continues to resonate so we will never forget.