Anne Frank’s book

AURA GURRERA EDO

1rst of Batxillerat
8- january- 2008
 INTRODUCTION
• This project is about Anne’s Frank book.
• We have read the book, and now, done some activities about it.
• This project is to see how is our interest to go to Amsterdam, as a
Comenius project. People who can go there, will stay in a family of a
teenager, to see their culture and places, and then, this teenager
will come here to know ours.
• Anne Frank book is chosen because it is situated in Holland where
people from our school will go to visit and share an experience to
live in another country for a week.
• Anne Frank was a thirteen girl, who lived during the Second World
War. In her diary she explains how she feels about the war, the
secret place she and her family where hiding, and her personal
feelings, about friends, and teenager problems.
 LITERARY AND CULTURAL
ANALISI OF THE WORK
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany. She gained international fame
because of the publication of her diary where she writes her experiences hiding during the German occupation of
the Netherlands in World War II.

ANNE FRANK AND HER FAMILY

Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany. As persecutions against
the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank
's office building. After two years, they were transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest,
Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after some days of the death of her sister,
Margot Frank. Her father Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her
diary had been saved, and it was published in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in
English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl.

THE DIARY
• The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, explains her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.
It has been translated into many languages and has become one of the world's most read books, and has been
the basis for several plays and films. Anne Frank has been known for the quality of her writing, and has become
one of the most discussed victims of the Holocaust.
• Anne's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts and she wrote several times that she would never
allow anyone to read it. She deeply described her life, her family and friends, and their situation, while she began
to realize her ambition to write for publication.
• In July 1945 after the deaths of Anne and Margot, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary, along with lots of notes
that she had saved, in the hope that she could have returned them to Anne. Otto Frank read them and later
commented that he had not realised that Anne had that well-written lines of their time in hiding. He also said that
he saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter, and those sections of the diary she had not
discussed with anyone, noting. Otto Frank said that words: “For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the
depth of her thoughts and feelings...She had kept all these feelings to herself".
• It was first published in Germany and France in 1950.
• The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960. It consists of the warehouse and
offices and the Achterhuis, so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms.

CURIOSITIES
• I would, finally add some curious information from the book:
• The Anne Frank tree is the horse-chestnut tree in the city center of Amsterdam that
was featured in Anne Frank's book. Anne Frank described the tree from the Annexe,
the building where she and her family were hiding from the Nazis during the
Second World War. The tree is estimated between 150 and 170 years old.
• Over the years, several films about Anne Frank appeared and her life and writings
have inspired a lot of groups of artists and social people that comment to make
reference to her in literature, popular music, television, etc.
• In 1999, Time named Anne Frank one of the heroes and of the 20th century on their
list The Most Important People of the Century, remarking: "With a diary kept in a
secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human
dignity”.
we can see Anne’s
• attic window

In this photo we can

barnacle the secret
Annex and the old
Chestnut tree, I talked
about, some lines
before.
 HISTORIC AND SOCIAL
CONTEXT OF THE BOOK
• This book is developed during the 2nd World War, which I am going
to talk about now, just to situate the book in the history.Soviet tanks
on parade in Moscow after the defeat of Germany

• The Second World War was a global military conflict which

involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the
great powers (nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence
on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess economic
, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other,
smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before
taking actions of their own), organized into two opposing military
alliances: the Allies (the British Empire, the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the
United States of America) and the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan).
The war involved the mobilization of over 100 million military people,
making it the most important war in history. Over 70 million people,
the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest
conflict in human history.
• The starting date of the war is generally agreed to be September
1939 with the German invasion of Poland
and subsequent declarations of
war on Germany by the United Kingdom, France and the British
Dominions. However, as a result of other events, many counties
entered the war before or after this date, from 1937 to 1941.
• The Soviet Union and the United States came from the war as the
world's superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which
lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the
hope of preventing another important conflict. The self determination
done by the war accelerated movements in Asia and Africa, while
Western Europe itself began moving toward integration.

Soviet tanks on parade in Moscow after

the defeat of Germany
• Other dates for the beginning of war include the Japanese
invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War
in 1937, or one of several other events. Other sources follow A. J. P. Taylor,
who holds that there was a simultaneous Sino-Japanese War in East Asia,
and a Second European War in Europe and her colonies, but they did not
become a World War until they merged in 1941; at which point the war
continued until 1945. This article uses the conventional dating.
• The end of the War also has several dates. Some sources end it from the
armistice of August 14, 1945, rather than the formal surrender; in some
European histories, it ended on V-E Day. The Treaty of Peace with Japan
was not signed until 1951.
• As Anne Frank and their family were Jewish, I had searched some
information about them.
• In 1933, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany,
The Jewish situation became more severe. Economic crises, racial anti-
Semitic laws, and a fear of an upcoming war lead many Jews to fleeing from
Europe to Palestine, to the United States and to the Soviet Union.
• A boy raises his hands when the Jews leave the bunkers after the
submission of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost all
of Europe. In 1941 when the invasion to the Soviet Union began,
Hitler ordered the initiation of the Final Solution – an extensive
organized the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe, in
which methodically and in a horrifying cruelty six million Jews were
murdered, is known as the Holocaust. In Poland, the Auschwitz
concentration camp alone, murdered above one million Jews in Gas
chambers.
• After the war it became clear that it's impossible to let the Jews of
the nations of the world any more.

A boy rai
ses his h
bunkers ands whe
after the n the Jew
Warsaw s ubmission s leave th
Ghetto U of the e
prising
CURIOSITIES
• I finally add some curiosities and crimes of the war:
• Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, but most suggest that
some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers
and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died because of disease, starvation,
massacres, and deliberate genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27
million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. Of the
total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent were on the Allied
side (mostly Soviet and Chinese) and 15 percent on the Axis side. One
estimate is that 12 million civilians died in Nazi concentration camps,1.5
million by bombs, 7 million in Europe from other causes, and 7.5 million in
China from other causes. Even though the majority of deaths were not
documented.
• The Nazis were responsible for the killing of approximately six million Jews
as well as two million ethnic Poles and four million others who were deemed
"unworthy of life" as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned
and executed by the Nazi Germany. About 12 million, most of whom were
Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy as
forced labor in Germany during World War II.
In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, or
labor camps, led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war (
POW) and even Soviet citizens themselves who had been or were thought
to be supporters of the Nazis.
 STUDY OF THE CITY AND COUNTRY
WHERE THE NOVEL DEVELOPES.

SITUATION
• The Netherlands is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of
the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean. The Netherlands is a
parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy, located in Western Europe. It is bordered
by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east.

HOLLAND
• The Netherlands is often called Holland, which is formally incorrect as North and
South Holland are merely two of its twelve provinces. The word Dutch is used to refer to the
people, the language, and anything appertaining to the Netherlands.

NATIONAL PARKS
• The Netherlands has 20 national parks and hundreds of other nature reserves, and include
lakes, heathland, woods, dunes and other habitats

PORTS
• Rotterdam has the largest port in Europe, with the rivers Meuse and Rhine. The port's main
activities are petrochemical industries and general cargo handling and transshipment.
 LANGUAGES
• The official language is Dutch, which is spoken by a majority of the
inhabitants, the exception being some groups of immigrants.Another official
language is West Frisian, which is spoken in the northern province of
Friesland, called Fryslân in that language. West Frisian is co-official only in
the province of Friesland, although with a few restrictions. There is a
tradition of learning foreign languages in the Netherlands: about 70% of the
total population have good knowledge of English, 55– 59% of German and
19% of French. Some Dutch secondary schools also teach Latin and
Ancient Greek.

PAINTERS
• The Netherlands has had many well-known painters. The 17th century, was
the age of the "Dutch Masters", such as Rembrandt van Rijn,
Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, Jacob van Ruysdael and many others.
Famous Dutch painters of the 19th and 20th century were Vincent van Gogh
and Piet Mondriaan. M. C. Escher is a well-known graphics artist.
Willem de Kooning was born and trained in Rotterdam, although he is
considered to have reached acclaim as an American artist
 CURIOSITIES
• Wooden clogs, a symbol of the Netherlands.
• The Netherlands is the country of philosophers Erasmus of Rotterdam and
Spinoza. All of Descartes' major work was done in the Netherlands. The
Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's moon Titan and
invented the pendulum clock. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to
observe and describe single-celled organisms with a microscope.
• Windmills, tulips, wooden shoes, cheese and Delftware pottery are the items
associated with the Netherlands.
• Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam: the capital and largest city of the
Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of
the country. The city, which had a population of 747,290 on 1
January 2008, comprises the northern part of the Randstad, the
6th-largest metropolitan area in Europe, with a population of around
6.7 million.Its name is derived from Amstel dam, indicative of the
city's origin: a dam in the river Amstel where the Dam Square is
today.
• The city is the financial and cultural capital of the Netherlands. The
Amsterdam Stock Exchange, part of Euronext, is located in the city
centre. Amsterdam's main attractions, including its historic canals,
the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, its
red-light district and its many cannabis coffee shops, draw 4.2
million tourists annually.
• Anne Frank house is situated in the building, number 263
Prinsengracht, in Ámsterdam.
 JEWEISH PEOPLE

HISTORY
• By traditional accounts, Jewish history began during the second millennium BCE with the Biblical
patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
• According to the Jewish Agency, as of 2007 there were 13.2 million Jews worldwide, 5.3 million
of whom lived in Israel, 5.3 million in the United States, and the remainder distributed in
communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated
world population.

JUDAISM
• Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture,
making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national
approach to identity is used.

ISRAEL
• Israel is the Jewish nation-state because it is the only country in which Jews make
• up a majority of the citizens

HEBREU
• Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism, the language in which the Hebrew scriptures were
composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries.
• JEWISH CULTURE
• Judaism guides its in both practice and belief, and has been called
not only a religion, but also a "way of life”, which has made drawing
a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish
identity rather difficult.

• THE HOLOCAUSTThis antisemitism reached its most destructive

form in the policies of Nazi Germany, which made the destruction of
the Jews a priority, culminating in the killing of approximately six
million Jews during the Holocaust from 1941 to 1945. At first the
Nazis used death squads to conduct massive open-air killings of
Jews and others in territory they conquered. By 1942, the Nazis
decided to implement the Final Solution, the genocide of the Jews of
Europe, and to increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishing
extermination camps specifically to kill Jews.
 • TRADITIONS

• Sabbath is the day of rest that begins Friday night at

sundown and
lasts until Saturday at sundown.

• Mikvahs, a specific type of bath designed for the purpose

of ritual immersion in Judaism, can be found throughout the
land of Israel.

• On Sukkot, The Festival of Booths Jews camp out under

the stars seven days and remember that God is ultimate
protection.

• The basic setup of a synagogue is pretty simple.

No matter what the size, synagogues are built facing
 CONCLUSIONS
• In my opinion this is a good book, because you can know how the things were for Jewish in that
times.
• Personally, I strongly believe, Anne Frank did an awesome work, writing as she did at her age.
She has a brilliant capacity of describing, not saying too much but not too little, she also used the
correct vocabulary, and we have to remember she was thirteen.
• While I was doing the project, I searched some information from Jewish, the Second World War
and the Netherlands where I really learnt some new things I didn’t before.
• One thing it really impacted me, was to see some of the photos of the Holocaust and the Second
World War.
• I imagined, being thirteen years old and, having to live in a secret Annexe. I imagine it’s really
difficult, so I really admire all people that saw and live all the war as Anne and her family did.
• But we don’t have to go so far, we just have to see all arround us, now days, and see all the
people as Saharauís, Bosnian people, and a large etc, that are suffering a war or they are not
allowed to be at their home. I really think is really hard to live one of this experiences, and we
should help them as much as we can.
• And going to some topics less sad, I think Netherlands and watching all the tulips have to be
really wonderfull as I really like flowers. I would really like to fit up this wooden shoes, and eat
some of this delicious cheese.
• Another think I learnt with this project is that jewish have a lot of costums that I didn’t know, as
Sabbath or Mikvahs.
• In conclusion, this book, has made me think about a lot of topics, and I think this project has
made me know more about some history and jewish culture.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
• www.google.es
• www.annefrank.es
• www.edu365.es
• www.amsterdam.info/es
• www.viquipèdia.com