Het Achterhuis... A Legacy

In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.

12 June, 2023 marked the 94th birthday of Anne Frank, one of my role models and one of the many reasons I began researching about the Holocaust and much of the 1900s era. I feel that one of the main reasons Anne and her story resonates with me so much is the fact that within such harsh conditions, and under constant trepidation, she kept writing. She never gave up on writing, and I believe it is so strangely beautiful. How can a person, who was under daily fear of being caught and sent to a concentration camp, of being met by Death itself, be hopeful enough to carry on writing and fine-tuning her short stories?

I believe Anne gives us a very firm ideology to believe in: Humanity runs on hope. It is in our core essence as humans to hope, as depicted by cultures all across the world and in different timelines (my personal favourite is Pandora's Jar).

I still remember my very first encounter with Anne herself. It was a mundane class in grade 4 and we opened our textbooks to the famous " I'll begin from the moment I got you..." 8 years later, that particular class is still fresh in my memory. I have a lot to thank Anne for, but specifically, I will always remember her as my inspiration to always remain hopeful.

When I first bought her entire diary, I began to realize that she was just as normal, as frivolous as a teenager today, with an eerily similar movie star obsession as I. Perhaps what struck me the most was the degree of detail in her diary, from complaints about her sister and how 'no one understands her' to her little crush on Peter van Daan, a boy who was in hiding with her. I realized a few years later that it was because she carried with her hope; hope of liberation, hope of being a writer, and hope of returning to her pre-war life.

Thank you, Annelies Marie Frank, for inspiring me to keep hoping.