A flower in full bloom

On June 12, 1942, Jewish girl Anne Frank began writing The Diary of Anne Frank. Courtesy of Visual China

The Diary of Anne Anne is a diary written by an Anne, a Jewish girl, during the war, which records the true voice of Anne during her hiding in the attic. During the 25 months she spent in the attic, she wrote more than 170 diaries that showed her rich and vast inner world in a relatively complete way.

Forced by the situation, Anne's family had to be isolated from the world, hiding in the attic, and living a closed and unfree life. At the time, Anne was only 13 years old. However, at a young age, she maintained an amazingly strong attitude towards life. She faces all kinds of confusion in life and growth, unable to understand her family, the shadow of war and the fear of being discovered, the lack of materials, the inconvenience of life, the twists and turns of love, the confusion of growing up... All kinds of events and emotions have devastated her and tempered her. Anne, who has experienced all this, has never been defeated, she has become more and more tenacious, mature, and has a deeper understanding of her relationship with others.

The attic where The Annes' family was hiding was located in the building of Anne's father's company, which had employees coming in and out during the day, and in order not to be discovered, they had to hide all traces of their lives and live carefully. Whether eating, washing, or working or resting, they endure great restrictions and the fear that comes with them. Anne never complained in her diary. She felt extremely fortunate to have a safe environment, and not only that, but she also felt a real sense of guilt for the suffering of her people.

What made Anne miserable was more on the spiritual level. In such a cramped environment, Anne always had to face the belittling and accusations of her mother and the people who lived with her. She was treated as a selfish, childish and rude little girl, always reprimanded and admonished. At one point, this bothered her. She didn't have her own room, she couldn't hide from such words anywhere, and the outside world was so dangerous and chaotic that she couldn't set foot on a single step. Arguably, she had nowhere to go. Unable to understand her own mother made her miserable, and her father, who always tried to teach herself, also let her down. She felt that no one could listen to her, which made her feel bored and lonely even though she was among many people.

In order to get rid of mental depression and depression, Anne made many positive and beneficial attempts. She studied shorthand and other courses, and read, researched, and wrote diligently; she recorded ideas that could not be communicated with others, and in this way she found a creative outlet for her emotions.

After living in the attic for more than a year, she began to develop strong and beautiful feelings for the boy peter she lived with. She hopes to get rid of loneliness and despair, and she also hopes that her emotional world can have some different ripples. Most importantly, she needs friends, friends who can get along with herself as equals, who can like herself and who can resonate with her spirit. It was only later that Anne discovered that Peter was not such a friend.

Since living in the attic for more than two years, even if there are many twists and turns in life and emotions, Anne has always embraced the love of life and hope for the future. "Yet as long as I look up at the heavens, I still believe that everything will be better, that cruelty will end, that peace and tranquility will return. At the same time, I must stick to my ideals, and the moment when I realize them may be coming. This passage can be said to be the true expression of Anne's heart. In the process of growing up, Anne has a better understanding of her parents and gradually gets out of the past troubles. She became more confident and determined, she wanted to experience a colorful world, to become a journalist, a writer, to live a broad life... As the counter-offensive progressed, it all seemed full of possibilities.

However, Anne's life died in the moments before the victory of the war.

Such a vivid and beautiful life is swallowed up by war, which makes the reader think deeply about war and its tragic costs. If tragedy is the destruction of beautiful things for people to see, then this diary is to let people know the end of a flower and then see for themselves how the flower blooms. The more brilliantly she bloomed, the more lamentable the ending became.

In this way, this diary interrogates the meaning of war and the cost of war. There are many people like Anne who are alive and broken from the future. The vast majority of people could not even leave a single word, they became a number of casualties, a wisp of dust in the air. The war was over, and no one remembered their names and their stories.

The diary provides an elusive footnote to that history of how a person faced a life of suffering. Those small and trivial troubles, those childish words and those sincere and courageous confessions, all make people remember that every life has lived and existed so passionately. They are by no means pieces of history that can be passed on, they are people with their own loves and hates, people with a complete world.

Man cannot be slaughtered, and man cannot be destroyed. Maybe it's common sense, or maybe it needs to be told over and over again. Because no one knows when common sense will be suddenly subverted and what the world will become in an instant. Or perhaps, a small person in a small attic can also bloom the most solemn and far-reaching brilliance of human nature, so that the light of this world will not be extinguished.

It's just that everyone thinks it's just a Jewish thing, a matter of a few extremists, and forgets to think about how everyone in the chain is united to turn the world into a big slaughterhouse. Almost every one of these enforcers thinks they are just accepting and obeying orders, which is not much of a fault.

So, who is guilty? Who should pay for it?

The war was over, and the answer to that question was buried.

Xihe Source: China Youth Daily

Source: China Youth Daily