19
be heard by passersby outside who would give away the location of the
hiding place. Ingrid Epstein Elefant, a Holocaust survivor who was
forced into hiding as a child, recalls “the long black days of dense and
deafening silence.”She continues, “No radio played my favorite songs.
. . . ‘Shshshsh,’ saidOma [Grandmother] when I hummed a little tune.
‘Shshsh,’ said Onkel (Uncle) Leo if I spoke above a whisper.”
10
Silence
The Diary Read Around the World
In 1942 twelve-year-old Anne Frank slipped into hiding in an office build-
ing in Amsterdam to evade capture by Nazis. Anne spent the next two
years crammed into small rooms with her parents, older sister, and four
other Jews. Her father had given her a diary, anticipating that his lively
and outspoken daughter would need an outlet during the long months
of hiding. Anne avidly chronicled all the details of the experience but
also her many musings about life. Her diary was silenced after August
1, 1944, when Nazis found the family and sent them to concentration
camps. Anne, her sister, and her mother died there. Only Anne’s fa-
ther survived. In 1947 he had portions of her diary published. Eventually
translated into sixty-seven languages, it has become the most famous
first-person account of the Holocaust.
Many of Anne’s thoughts that were shocking or portrayed anger or
irritability were not included in the originally published diary. In 1996
Anne’s cousin, Buddy Elias, had the complete, uncensored diary pub-
lished. It was 30 percent longer than the original version and included
every word Anne wrote during her time in captivity, the uplifting and the
pessimistic alike. “It shows her in a truer light,” he says of the full, uncut
version. “People try to make a saint out of her and glorify her. That she
was not. She was an ordinary, normal girl with a talent for writing.” Her
unabridged diary provides a well-rounded view of the Holocaust’s ef-
fects on a bright young mind.
Quoted in Marianne MacDonald, “The Things That Anne Was Really Frank About,”
Inde-
pendent
(London), October 22, 1996.
