Cherry Gilchrist

I am basically a terrible person.

This isn't a review- I'm not going to go into my reasons for giving this book 2 stars. That would not do anybody any good. I will simply say that I feel extremely guilty rating the book this low, but I hope people understand that it doesn't reflect my view of the Holocaust as a whole, or my views of Anne Frank as a person. I have the utmost respect for both.

The girlfriend of my great-grandfather* lost her mother and her daughter in the Holocaust. Her daughter show more had a hairpin, a beautiful golden thing with topaz and pearls, and it was passed down to me. I never got to meet my great-grandfather nor Fanny (his girlfriend), but she put the pin in a box and gave it to my mother with these words written on it. (I was still a baby, and neither of them would live past my second birthday.)

That pin is a lot like this book. Whenever I look at it, nestled in my jewellery box, I feel the weight of generations of guilt pressing down on me. Its owner is long gone, and yet I feel the strangest thing- simultaneously connected and disconnected. I am in possession of something that unnamed girl loved, just as reading Anne's diary, and there's an eerie sense of abandonment in the object being left behind but their owners having perished long before their time.

Granted, I'm Jewish, but I can't help but feel that simply by being alive and knowing of the Holocaust and of genocides in general, I am doing them a disservice. In the wake of tragedies like this, there is nothing to say, there are no words, so I'm not going to waste this review talking about the merits and downfalls of this book. It is not mine to critique- this is the diary of a real girl who really did live, and so pointing out its flaws is a vain pursuit, in that it is so inextricable from its owner, just like that topaz hairpin.

There is a time and a place for criticising memoirs without criticising their authors, but now is not the time nor the place. Suffice it to say that I feel like an awful person for rating this so low, but I will not budge on it. One of my core principles is that I judge books in and of themselves, and how they stand on their own- it is impossible to do so here, with the text so linked to the history.

I don't know what to do with The Diary of Anne Frank or that hairpin. They remind me to never forget the tragedy, but how could I anyway? I don't own them, and I never can- they're relics, relics that do not and cannot ever belong to anybody but their original owners, and so I suppose I'll always feel like I'm keeping watch over the prized possessions of two girls who are never coming back to retrieve them.

*He was a baker who became an army dentist when the bakers' union went on strike in the Great Depression. Quite an interesting fellow. show less

I gotta say, the dolphin was a kind of douche. I mean, if you're wet and likely cold, and you're being carried on someone's back and they're asking you questions, then you'd likely just want to get along with your rescuer. So I'm sure that's all Monkey was trying to do when the dolphin asked him questions. So the dolphin was an ass for tossing Monkey off his back just because he was a monkey.

Moral - One falsehood leads to another.

It's a good moral, but the story could have been presented better.

Better than I expected. I had read bits and pieces of it before. I'm sure I had to read an abridged version in grade school, but had not read it in its entirety until now.

If I was a 14 year old hiding from the Nazis I would worry about dying a virgin. This was a worry for me even as an american teen with no immediate threat to my life. I am surprised that there isn't more fooling around, but maybe she was editing that out.

At first I was put off by the bickering in the hideout, but as I show more think about it I am sure that almost any group of people trapped and under stress would have a lot of internal drama.

Anne seems to be doing a pretty good job of educating herself while in hiding. It makes me wonder about COVID and distance learning. How much did she benefit from absence of distractions? if she were hiding today, would she have wifi? Would she be watching youtube instead of learning English and studying the lives of holy roman emperors?

Her account is fairly detailed, but I am still a bit confused about what everyone does all day. Cooking and housekeeping do take time, and it seems like they also do some accounting and other work for the spice company, but I think there would be a lot of unused time in everyday and that keeping busy would be key to avoiding going crazy. Anne does a good job studying, but what is everyone else doing?

It seems like Otto Frank was wearing a tie while in hiding. Why? Was that just the standard at the time? show less

There was a big meeting of the animal kingdom, and the monkey was asked to dance. He did so with such skill and aplomb that most of the animals were dazzled enough to elect him to be their new king. (I guess dumb beast really means dumb beast here, lol)

The fox, being too clever, saw through the dance and knew that dancing did not make a worthy leader, so he did not vote for the monkey.

Some time later, Fox came across a trap that had a bit of meat still in it. He went to the new king and told show more him he'd found something nice, but because the monkey was king, the fox thought he should have the first right to it.

Naturally, the money goes to the trap, reaches for the meat, and gets trapped. The fox,, watching this from a safe distance, laughs, pointing out that the king can not even take care of himself. After that, the animals hold another election. (The end result is never revealed, as the story ends here)

Moral - The true leader proves himself by his qualities.

This is a moral that in itself I wholeheartedly agree with, though I feel the story itself did not really exemplify the moral all that well. show less