Friday night Anne and I had theater tickets at the Rep.  The play was The Diary of Anne Frank.  Years ago I had seen this play in its movie form.  Although, I watched it on TV, I remember being moved by it then.  I was at an age contemporary with Anne Frank when I watched it.  I’m sure that this helped me identify with the protagonist.

She was born Annelies Marie Frank of Frankfurt, Germany in 1929.  She and her family moved to the Netherlands in 1933, when the Nazis first came to power.  The play deals with the period of her life, starting in 1942, when she and her family first go into hiding and then covers the period of their hiding.

Anne did not survive the war.  She died when she was fifteen.  She and her family were discovered and they were all sent to the concentration camps.  She is remembered because of the diary that she kept.  Of the nine people who she hid with, only her father survived the war.  When he returned to Amsterdam after the war, he was presented with her diary, that had been left when the Nazis took them away.

He read her diary for the first time then and was moved by the passion and intellect that her writing displayed.  The diary was eventually published as, The Diary of a Young Girl.  The play came soon afterwards.

Her youthful optimism, as captured in her diary, is easiest seen by reading a few quotes:

• And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.
• Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
• Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!
• How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
• Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

When I first heard that this week we would be going to see The Diary of Anne Frank, I groaned inside.  With all of the problems that this world is now facing why dredge up a story from the past?   But it is good to remember and when the remembrance is as pleasurable as this play was, it is not that hard.  We should remember, less we forget, because those that forget history, are condemned to relive it.

Cast members from, The Diary of Anne Frank: Featuring (from left to right): Lauren Orkus (Anne Frank), John Rensenhouse (Otto Frank), Maggie Wetzel (Margot Frank), Ann Talman (Edith Frank), Andrew Stroud (Peter Van Daan), Peggy Billo (Mrs. Van Daan), Gary Wayne Barker (Mr. Dussel), Peter Van Wagner (Mr. Van Daan) and Maura Kidwell (Miep).