Understanding Anne Frank
This semester, our S3L2 English class embarked on a journey through Anne Frank’s story, a tale many recognise, as it is one of the world’s best-selling books, yet few know what actually happened to her. A young Jewish girl went into hiding with her family for two years, in the attic she called “The Secret Annex”, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. The family was eventually captured and sent to concentration camps, as were the other four people that lived with them. The Annex’s only survivor was Anne’s father, who published her memories after the war, under the title of “The Diary of a Young Girl”. By doing so, he fulfilled Anne’s dream of becoming a writer.
We started our project by reading the book individually, afterwards, we shared in class our thoughts and feelings about this heartbreaking story. We then watched several documentaries and films to better understand what the situation was like and under what circumstances these people lived. Through this book, we felt Anne’s frustration about being confined and her hope for freedom and humanity.
The class was later split into groups to create timelines of the lives of those hiding in the Annex. We also made a podcast, which will be available on the school website, and possibly on Spotify, in which we all presented our characters from different perspectives: for instance, some of us imagined a dialogue with the people in the Annex as if they were still alive today, others focused on their stories and the relationships they had with one another, some envisioned possible interviews with Anne during and after her confinement.
The S3L1 English class worked on a parallel project where they chose meaningful quotations from the book. We then gathered all the quotations and timelines and displayed them on a special wall in our classroom called “The Anne Frank Wall.”
All these activities helped us comprehend the reality of living under the terror of war. The story of Anne Frank is not only the story of a girl our age caught in the middle of the world’s bloodiest war, but the story of millions who, like Anne, had their hopes and dreams shattered by the horrors of this conflict and eventually lost their lives. This experience has made us realise that we shouldn’t take for granted the freedoms that we enjoy and that we should prevent this from happening again.
- Sofia Vasiliu
