Anne Frank - The Greatest Individual of The Twenieth Century

In a wartime nightmare of starvation, brutality and death, Anne Frank’s courage and compassion made her an international legacy. During the more than fifty years since World War Two and the Holocaust, few stores have achieved the mythic quality of Anne Frank’s diary, and few accounts have so deeply affected millions of people around the world (Ritter, 1998, pg. 51). At the age of thirteen, Anne began writing a diary which would become not only a valuable historical testimony of World War Two but gave a voice to all the countless Jewish peoples who perished under Hitler’s reign (Hoffman, Online, 2011). Today the name of Anne Frank arouses thoughts of idealism, optimism and above all greatness. Streets, schools, youth centres bear her name, just as public statues, commemorative coins and stamps bear her image. Youth villages, forests and foundations have been named after her. Requiems, cantatas, poems and songs have been composed. Public figures of every kind from politicians to religious leaders regularly evoke her name and quote lines from her book. In one of her last and most quoted diary entries, Anne wrote that “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart” (Frank, 1995, pg.57). Such faith shames the revisionists and is a reminder that Anne Frank’s life and work represent a triumph of the human spirit of life over the purveyors of death. Anne Frank’s steadfast courage in the face of adversity, highlighted in every page of her diary, is ...

Anne Frank - The Greatest Individual of The Twenieth Century

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