Revisiting Anne Frank's Diary

By Nagalingam Kumarakuruparan

In April 1904, an English Buddhist named Aleister Crowley visited Cairo with his wife Rose. Crowley was a mystic who learned Buddhism and Transendal Meditation on previous trips to Sri Lanka then Ceylon, and India. On his trip to Egypt, however, Aleister Crowley was to add a new dimension to his spiritual experience. For three days, he sat in the hotel room meditating between noon and afternoon. He later claimed that a ‘being’ appeared to him during that time each day and dictated the text of a book titled liebr al vel legis (the book of the law).

Anne Frank

The ‘being’ announced to Crowley that the old age was passing away, and a new age was dawning. The ‘being’ allegedly predicted World War I and World War II. lt warned that the planet would be bathed in blood, barbarism and lust, and cruelty would prevail and lead to the destruction of spiritual sentiments.

Only a few months later near Linz, Austria an unstable young man named Adolf Hitler underwent a transformation that may well have been demonic: Hitler was giving shape to the Nazi movement.

Nazism

Nazism was no mere political movement of racist gangsters and misfits, as is commonly believed, but rather, a religion in which Adolf Hitler was the messiah, Heinrich Himmler the high priest and the men of the SS the clergy. They waged a crusade against Jews across Europe. The crusade was later called The Holocaust. The seven years of the Holocaust (1938-1945) were a period during which the most civilised nation in history, Germany embarked on a premeditated campaign to exterminate one of the oldest nations in history – the Jewish people.

This is something beyond the imagination of mankind. The Holocaust was a premeditated plan in the making for almost three decades. The plan which had been conceived in the sick mind of a youthful Hitler came to maturity in the anxious and chaotic days of post – World War I Germany.

It is not difficult to see Holocaust as the most depraved period of man's history as did Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost, a whole people - A cultured and intelligent people - declared “Evil be Thou My Good”. It was a time when acts that would normally be condemned as Evil and satanic were hallowed as ‘Good’ and even righteous. The Holocaust has no rational explanation. But The Holocaust had a survivor. A fourteen year Jewish girl Anne Frank is the most famous Holocaust survivor, unbelievable! But what survived was her diary. Through the eternal words of one young teenager the world came to know the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

“I want to go on living after my death and, therefore, I am grateful to God for giving me this gift.... of expressing all that is in me” when fourteen year old Anne Frank wrote these words in her diary, she could never have imagined how they would come true, the story of her tragically brief life would become one of the most inspiring and heart breaking story to emerge from the Second World War.

The Frank family went to Netherlands in 1933 when they saw Nazism on the rise in Germany. Anne Frank, with her parents and sister and four other people went into hiding in the back rooms of an Amsterdam office building in 1942, when the Nazis invaded Netherlands and intensified their persecution of Jews.

On her 13th birthday Anne's father presented her a book (diary) in which she began to keep a record of (journal) events, experiences and thoughts. This is Amsterdam in 1942. For two years they remained safe. In August 1944, they were betrayed. Anne died in the concentration camp at Bergen – Belsen. All the others perished except her father.

Intimate diary

Anne's astonishingly intimate diary was found by accident. With a touch of genius it records the strains of her unusual life in hiding, the problems of her unfolding womanhood, her relationships, Frank family's harrowing two years spent in hiding, her unswerving faith in her religion, and it also reveals the shining nobility of her spirit. Her diary, later published in a book form became one of the best loved books of all time.

Her words will continue to testify decency and goodness, and reach hearts and minds of countless generations to come, and they may endure for eternity.

The real message of Anne Frank's diary is tolerance. “Hatred leads to a form of violence and destruction which is terrifying and revolting as Anne Frank's story demonstrates. Anne made it abundantly clear, though she did not live to see it, the future is in our hands – and we are able to make it a tolerant one or a racist one, by our actions or lack of them,” wrote Julia new Berger, a survivor of the Holocaust, in the book The World of Anne Frank.

Life and Ideology, or (philosophy) must march together because life is action and ideology is at once its explanation, interpretation and reflective commentary. Thus ideology, like science is twofold, Abstract and applied, both are complementary to each other. Both are indivisible and their development has to be simultaneous.

While the abstract aspect of Ideology attempts to satisfy our intellect and reasoning faculty, applied ideology is useful in giving solace, peace and poise to life. Anything opposite to this is evil. Nazism thrived for sometime because God was replaced by a Fuhrer and his minions who claimed for themselves the power of life and death went unchallenged.

''What hope she had of ordinary love and interest survives her here, displayed above the bed, as pictures of her family; some actors; fashion chosen by princess Elizabeth, and those who stoop to see them find not only patience missing its reward, but one enduring wish for chances....”

Anne Frank Huis - Andrew Motion.