Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who lived in Amsterdam during the Holocaust time at World War II. Born on June 12, 1929, Anne and her family went into hiding in 1942 when the Nazi regime began to persecute Jews in the Netherlands. The family hid in a secret annex above her father’s business with another family and a family friend.
During their two years in hiding, Anne wrote extensively in her diary, which she had received as a gift for her 13th birthday. Her diary entries chronicled her life in hiding, her thoughts and feelings, and her dreams and ambitions. Anne’s diary has since become one of the most famous and widely read works of literature in the world.
Anne Frank wrote in her diary on 11 November 1934 (in Dutch):
Ode to My Fountain Pen In Memoriam
My fountain pen was always one of my most prized possessions; I valued it highly, especially because it had a thick nib, and I can only write neatly with thick nibs. It has led a long and interesting fountain-pen life, which I will summarise below.
When I was nine, my fountain pen (packed in cotton wool) arrived as a ‘sample of no commercial value’ all the way from Aachen, where my grandmother (the kindly donor) used to live. I lay in bed with flu, while the February winds howled around our flat. This splendid fountain pen came in a red leather case, and I showed it to my girlfriends the first chance I got. Me, Anne Frank, the proud owner of a fountain pen.
When I was ten, I was allowed to take the pen to school, and to my surprise, the teacher even let me write with it. When I was eleven, however, my treasure had to be tucked away again, because my sixth-form teacher allowed us to use only school pens and ink-pots. When I was twelve, I started at the Jewish Lyceum and my fountain pen was given a new case in honour of the occasion. Not only did it have room for a pencil, it also had a zip, which was much more impressive. When I was thirteen, the fountain pen went with me to the Annexe, and together we’ve raced through countless diaries and compositions. I’d turned fourteen and my fountain pen was enjoying the last year of its life with me when . . .
It was just after five on Friday afternoon. I came out of my room and was about to sit down at the table to write when I was roughly pushed to one side to make room for Margot and Father, who wanted to practise their Latin. The fountain pen remained unused on the table, while its owner, sighing, was forced to make do with a very tiny corner of the table, where she began rubbing beans. That’s how we remove mould from the beans and restore them to their original state. At a quarter to six I swept the floor, dumped the dirt into a newspaper, along with the rotten beans, and tossed it into the stove. A giant flame shot up, and I thought it was wonderful that the stove, which had been gasping its last breath, had made such a miraculous recovery.
All was quiet again. The Latin students had left, and I sat down at the table to pick up where I’d left off. But no matter where I looked, my fountain pen was nowhere in sight. I took another look. Margot looked, Mother looked, Father looked, Dussel looked. But it had vanished.
‘Maybe it fell in the stove, along with the beans!’ Margot suggested.
‘No, it couldn’t have!’ I replied.
But that evening, when my fountain pen still hadn’t turned up, we all assumed it had been burned, especially because celluloid is highly inflammable. Our darkest fears were con firmed the next day when Father went to empty the stove and discovered the clip, used to fasten it to a pocket, among the ashes. Not a trace of the gold nib was left. ‘It must have melted into stone,’ Father conjectured.
I’m left with one consolation, small though it may be: my fountain pen was cremated, just as I would like to be some day.
In 1944, the secret annex was discovered by the Nazis, and Anne and her family were sent to concentration camps. Anne and her sister, Margot, were later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they both died of typhus in early 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by British forces.
After the war, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was the only member of the family to survive. He returned to Amsterdam and discovered Anne’s diary, which had been left behind in the secret annex. He published the diary in 1947, and it has since been translated into over 70 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Anne Frank’s diary has become an iconic symbol of hope, resilience, and the human spirit in the face of adversity. Her story has inspired countless people around the world to stand up against prejudice, hatred, and injustice. The Anne Frank House, the museum in Amsterdam where Anne and her family hid, is now a popular tourist attraction and serves as a memorial to Anne and the millions of other victims of the Holocaust.
