H1 Section title

Publicity about Anne Frank and het diary

A child's voice

Jan Romein - Het Parool, April 3, 1946

Print

By pure chance, a diary written during the war years has come into my possession. The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation already has some two hundred similar diaries, but I would be very surprised if there was one among them that is as lucid, as intelligent and as sensitive as this one.

I read it, from cover to cover, in one evening, completely forgetting everything else around me. When I had finished it was nighttime and I was amazed to see that the lights were still on, that there was still bread and tea, that there was no droning of airplanes overhead and no pounding of soldiers boots -- so thoroughly had this diary captivated me and transported me back in time, to that illusory world of more than a year ago.

Written by a Jewish girl, it begins when she is 13 years old and goes into hiding with her parents and her older sister and ends one ill-fated day two years later when the Gestapo discover the family's hiding place. She dies one month before the liberation in one of the worst German concentration camps, just short of her sixteenth birthday.

How she died, I would rather not know. I fear it probably happened in much the same way as can be read in so many camp reminiscences. Perhaps it occured in much the same way as described in the recently published "Tusschen Leven en Dood in Auschwitz" (Between Life and Death in Auschwitz), even though it happened to be a different camp.

The way she died is not important. What is important, is that her young life was deliberately cut short by a system whose mindless cruelty, while it was raging, we swore we would neither forgive nor forget. Yet, now that it has gone, we are already forgetting, if not forgiving, which is ultimately one and the same thing.

For me, this seemingly insignificant child's diary, this 'de profundis' in the faltering voice of a child, embodies the real hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence presented at Nuremberg. The fate of this Jewish girl represents the most grievous crime the eternally condemnable spirit is capable of perpetuating. The worst crime is not the destruction of life and culture in itself -- these could also fall victim to a cultural revolution -- but crushing the sources of culture, the destruction of life and talent merely for the sake of mindless destruction.

If all the signs do not deceive me, had she lived, this girl, would have become a telented writer. Having arrived here from Germany at the age of four, within ten years she was able to write a pure and simple Dutch to be envied; exhibiting a sort of penetrating insight into human nature -- her own included -- that would be considered amazing for an adult, let alone a child. Yet, she also depicts human nature's limitless potential for humour, compassion and love -- something for which one could admire her more, but would normally cringe at the thought -- if at the same time this condemnation and approval were not so profoundly childlike.

That this child could be taken from our midst and murdered is proof to me that we as people have lost the battle against the beast within. We have lost because we have nothing positive to offer in opposition; and we will continue to lose, against whatever form inhumanity might also present itself as, so long as we are not able to offer anything positive in its place.

Promising that we will never forget and never forgive is not enough. Even keeping that promise is not enough. To respond passively or negatively will not do it. Responding actively and positively with "totalitarian" democracy -- politically, socially, economically and culturally -- seems to be the only thing that can save us. Building a society where talent is no longer destroyed, repressed and oppressed, but discovered, nurtured and encouraged, whenever it may show itself. Still, with all our good intentions, we are no closer to that kind of democracy than we were before the war.

Copyright © 1946 Het Parool. Reprinted with permission.

The article "A Child's Voice" was published in 1946 in the April 3 issue of the Amsterdam newspaper "Het Parool". It was the first article that attributed historical significance to Anne's diary and it was instrumental in leading to its publication. At that time, Jan Romein was professor of Dutch History at the University of Amsterdam.