Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

My fifth grade students (eleven year olds) and I recently
read and discussed Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.
I would like to share these seven students' responses.

Charly Bullock, A:Shiwi Elementary School
Zuni, New Mexico, USA

I think Anne Frank was a very strong person because she lived a long time in a hiding place. She could not eat a lot. She had to eat rotten potatoes and other kinds of food that I would not want to eat. They had to stay very quiet in the day time because other people could hear them. Anne's dad had a friend who hid the family. Their hiding place was in a building their friend owned. In that building there was an attic where they hid.

Anne had to share a bed because there were not enough beds. When she got bored she wanted to read adult books like her older sister read. She also read books she could learn from. She wanted to learn English.

Anne Frank had a diary she kept writing in every 2 or 3 days. In school she had lots of friends. At school she liked Peter and thought he was going to be her boyfriend a long time, but in the attic there was another boy also named Peter that she fell in love with. She said he was quiet. She visited his room to talk to him. He got used to Anne talking to him and they became good friends, but Anne's mom did not really trust Anne going into Peter's room.

After the workers in the building left, everyone in the attic would go to the building's private office to listen to the radio. They liked to listen to what was going on in their town and about the war. When there was news about the war they got excited.

Anne thought that the Nazis were trying to kill them. She didn't hate, but she just felt sorry for them. Anne thought she was going to be free when the war ended. All of the people who were hiding kept talking about what they were going to do after the war ended.

The last time Ann wrote in her diary was in March 1945. She wrote:

It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear every approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into heaven, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Yours,

Anne

Anne was sent to a concentration camp. At the camp she saw her friend. When they saw each other, they started to cry. Her friend was on the other side of a fence. Anne died at a death camp. At the end of the book I felt sorry because Anne died. And her family died.

I think that if Anne lived that her diary would not have been published and people would not know about her. I think lots of people know about Anne, her family, and her diary. Anne was a good, cheerful, gentle person most of the time.

Have you ever wanted to know how it was in the past? Well, I have. Some other classmates and I have read a book called Anne Frank. What I have learned about Anne Frank is that if a person is different than you, you do not make fun of that person or say you are greater than that person. Nobody is greater than another person. Everybody is the same in a way like we are all human beings.

What I have learned about Anne Frank is that she was strong even though she knew that she was going to die. If I were to be in the same thing Anne was in, I would probably not know how to keep myself happy. Another thing that I have learned from reading the book Anne Frank is always to be strong no matter what happens. The last thing I have learned is that no person should decide who should live and die. I think that war is not a good thing to settle problems because a lot of people die and lose their families. Many people had to die in the war because of one person's decision.

Anne Frank had to go through hard times. She had to eat little things at a time and always had to be quiet. If I were to do that I would go crazy. I would be really scared if I knew that I would die. Well that is what I have learned from the book Anne Frank. I will remember what she had to go through. I think that this book should be recopied over and over in the future so kids will learn what I have learned from reading this book.

I feel sad for Anne Frank because she had a very hard life. She had to live in that little attic for almost three years. She could not even go outside. I think she was a very strong girl because she always cheered herself up when the war was going on. She thought everybody was good inside of them even though people made fun of her. She thought that even the Nazis were good inside of them. She became a famous author without her knowing it, and she thought nobody would ever read her diary.

I thought Anne's life was sad. I want to know how she entertained herself. What I wonder the most of all is why Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and other people who were different from him?

This book about Anne Frank's diary was written 50 years ago and it gets printed every year. Anne's diary only went up to page 268. It was kind of long to finish up the book. When you read the book, you feel like it is now and you can picture how it might look if you were born then. The book is both funny and sad. The funniest part that I liked was when she was using the bathroom and it sounded like a big brick falling off a mountain.

The book was about Hitler and his Nazis who had a war against the Dutch and the Jews. Anne and her family had to hide in a secret annex because Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews. I think that if they didn't go into hiding they would have been dead long before. Anne was probably sick of staying in that little annex for over a year and not coming out. It was just like staying in a cave. I wonder what it would be like always sleeping on a little bed only two meters long.

The people hiding in the secret annex hated to eat potatoes, boiled lettuce, and only a little cup of porridge. If it was me living there I would be sick and dirty for not taking a shower all day. A boy named Peter was hiding in the secret annex too. Peter was 17 1/2 and Anne Frank was 14 1/2 years old. They were in love. Anne was happy when she got a kiss from Peter. My thoughts were that they were going to live forever and be happy.

I wonder why the Nazis killed the Jewish people. All men and women are created equal. The Nazis killed the Jews just because they talked different and had a different religion. The Nazis took the Jews to a death camp where they were killed. Hitler and his soldiers were always killing people at day and night, sometimes at the middle of the night too.

Someone told that Anne and her family were hiding in the secret annex. When the police found them hiding, they were taken to a death camp. When the war ended, the Jewish people were given their freedom. Anne and her family were almost saved. When they were captured, there were only three more months left in the war until everyone was free. Anne died at the camp.

I think that this book is a very special book. I know that this book touched a lot of people all over the world. The reason why I know that is because there are over 1,000,000 (one million) copies of Anne Frank's diary. It is printed in lots of languages. In fact, if I learn Spanish from my mother in time, I could buy the Spanish version and read it to my grandma and my other relatives on my mother's side that understand what I am reading. And knowing them, they could put down a long list of feelings that they had during the story.

I thought the message was how cruel Hitler was to Jews and other people who had different religions, skin, hair, and even eyes. But, as I said before, Anne was a very brave girl. All I wonder about is how she entertained herself. Well, what I think got her going during her last years in the secret annex was that kiss from Peter. I think that it was very sad that she just had to hide out one more day from the Nazis. I think that she was very brave, understanding and mature. Here is what I would have done if I were in her shoes: when walking down the stairs I would be making all the noise in the world and for sure we would get caught. If I slept with that annoying Mr.Dussel, he would probably end up on the floor the next morning! If Ms. Van Daan got mad at me just because I was childish or spoiled, I would say "that is just how God created me" and leave the room. The way Anne and I are the same is that we both like to write in our diary.

I thought that this book was a good book for me to read. When I first read this book, I felt that something bad would happen to Anne. Maybe she was going to get killed. When we got to the middle of this book, we heard that a lot of people got killed. Before they were killed, they were taken to death camps and every day and night a lot of people were killed and burned in large ovens.

When people looked out their camp windows, they would see smoke coming out of a chimney. They knew that their friends, cousins, uncle, aunt, mom, dad, brother, sister, or some other relative was killed. When they took Anne to the concentration camp, she didn't like it. When she heard that her mother was sick and died, Anne started to cry. After Anne's mother died, Anne's sister Margot died.

I feel very sad because Anne could not go outside. She had to be imprisoned in that small annex. I could not be as brave as she was. I wonder how she could have stayed so happy during a horrible war. I think she was brave because she had a friend to share her feelings with -- her diary. Maybe that is why she was so brave.

Even though the Nazis were so cruel to the Jews, Anne thought everyone good at heart. Anne was almost like Martin Luther King because they both thought, why can't we have our own religion? If I had to be sent to a concentration camp, I would be furious. I wonder why Hitler had to be so mean to the Jews. If I were Hitler I would have been friends with all the Jews and other people. I wouldn't be mean just because other people had a different religion or different color of skin.