It made me smile, cry, and caused my heart to break. It was a true look into what this Jewish girl, her family and her friends went through hiding from Nazi's. ( )

You already know how this book ends: an afterword explaining how the people described by the precocious and chatty young author and all of the people hidden away with her from the Nazis, were discovered, and sent to concentration camps to die. Only her father survived to edit and publish his youngest daughter’s narrative of enforced confinement. In it, Anne reveals her frustrations, small joys, a growing awareness of her own sexuality and a crush that develops into love with the shy teenage Peter with whom she is confined. She also expresses her desire to write and become a novelist so that she would be known as a writer when she was liberated.

Ironically, she died when 16 of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and was buried there with her older sister in a mass grave. Posthumously, she is an author whose diary has been translated into seventy languages and sold thirty-five-million copies. ( )

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.

In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

There are three main versions of the Diary: Version A, as originally written by Anne Frank; Version B, as edited by Anne Frank herself; and Version C, as edited and abridged by her father Otto Frank. Version C is the one that is best known; however, all three versions were published in The Critical Edition. This ‘Definitive Edition’ is for general readers that has been compiled by Mirjam Pressler from Version C, supplemented with approximately 30% additional material from Versions A and B as well as material from five pages that were discovered in 1998.

I first read the Diary of a Young Girl also known as The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a teenager and contemplated the same things Gatti texts.

“Anne, who were you? What were you dreaming of? Where are you taking me?”

As the haunting documentary rounds out, we see how survivors like Helga Weiss coped with the atrocities of war by drawing pictures while others like Anne Frank wrote their feelings down on paper.

Anne started her spirit-filled diary in 1942 and like many of us, she had fictional friends, with Kitty being her favorite. Here are a few of Anne's entries.

"Dear Kitty...I like writing to you most, you know that don’t you, and I hope the feeling is mutual."

"It seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old girl. Oh well, it doesn't matter. I feel like writing."

Anne's final Diary entry: "As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. ….”

Anne showed a great sense of purpose in editing her own diary. Her writings are an emotional read and many of us know very little of the fear Anne must have felt. Anne and the victims of the Holocaust taught us a great many things about hope for humanity. We know history has the power to repeat itself so I'll leave you with a few final quotes from Anne.

”What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it from happening again.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ( )

The audiobook of this was well compiled and narrated. ( )