Location

Bio
Thanks for recapping the Diary of Anne Frank. I'be been meaning to re-read it and now I think I finally will. I was captivated by the book when I first read it in high school. It has been an inspirational model as I write my memoirs which I've developed, even read parts of, at various IWWG week-end conferences and workshops. I am Italian American and I grew up in the Bronx in a predominantly Jewish, Irish and Italian neighborhood. My introduction to the Holocaust came through our neighbor Mrs. Beller's daughter Millie who insisted that we gather in front of the t.v. to watch a documentary called Remember Us that reported all of the horrors of the camps in detail. I was so stunned that for a long time after seeing Remember Us, I remember being angry at the Catholic church and the Pope for not having "done something."
But hearing Anne Frank's story told through the eyes of an observant young girl so strong and capable of sharing her emotions in spite of or due to the circumstances surrounding her was an experience of the Holocaust that in some ways felt ennobling -- a triumph if you will of the power of the human spirit and determination to assert and express itself despite the adversities surrounding it. Another book that comes to mind is Victor Frankel's The Search for the Meaning of Life -- which if memory serves me asserts that while a human being may be stripped of personal markers of identity like rings, and other material possessions -- a man cannot be stripped of his thoughts -- and it is thought and emotion that define and assert who we are and those can never be taken or diminished by anyone.
I believe The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the greatest memoirs ever written. www.Geraldeena.com