Tuesday, June 23, 2015

June Reread - Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage - Ernst Schnabel

Information was much harder to come by in general when I was a kid. Unlike today, when one can generally find out lots of information about most subjects after a few seconds of Googling, when I had devoured Anne's diary and wanted to learn more, I had to do lots of hands-on research to discover more background information. I enjoy research, but it was a bit more tedious and haphazard back then, and I discovered this little paperback, which had to be specially ordered from the bookstore for me, while performing such hit-or-miss research.

This book was originally published in Germany in 1958 and it was a wonderful find. It fills in a lot of information about Anne and her family and friends, and the brave people who helped them hide, including many first-person interviews that were very contemporary with the events of the war. One of the best parts for me was the inclusion of some of Anne's other writing - in addition to keeping her diary, she also wrote short stories and was working on a novel, and it was really gratifying for me to read these writings for the first time. Recommended.

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