![]() ![]() Anne’s opinions on her parents were edited to seem less harsh - for instance, this version removes the line “Father’s fondness for talking about farting and going to the lavatory is disgusting.”Īnne’s thoughts and observations about her body were also cut in version C. Moreover, it omits things that she surely would have wanted kept in version B, since she put them there in the first place.Īccording to the forward of Penguin’s Definitive Edition (the audiobook I began listening to), several paragraphs on Anne’s personal attitudes and experiences were edited or completely removed from version C. I considered this blend offensive to Anne’s privacy - since in the diary itself she stated that she didn’t want anyone to read her unfiltered thoughts. Click To TweetĪfter her father was given the remains of both versions by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, who hid the Franks, he and the publishing house edited them into a version that combined the original diary and the rewritten version, with some additional redactions. ‘The Diary Of A Young Girl’ is an abridged, reworked, and redacted version of the diary Anne actually wrote. But version C is the one that most schools handed out in English class, and Anne had no control over that version at all. Version B is Anne’s rewrite in novel form, after she heard on the radio that Minister Bolkestein - the minister for Education, Art and Science during World War II - had requested that all diaries during the German occupation were to be kept and studied for years to come. Version A is the original journal, the actual words she wrote while in hiding. ![]() So I couldn’t continue listening to it, particularly after learning that many omitted sections were on gender-specific topics like sexuality and a young woman’s relationship to her mother.Īs it turns out, there are actually three versions of Anne’s diary. To omit important facts and attitudes from its pages just seemed wrong. After all, it’s supposed to be a portal into the past: Anne’s experience in the annex, exactly what happened exactly as it happened. There’s something very unsettling about the idea of editing someone’s personal and autobiographical journal. Out of respect for the dead, Otto Frank also omitted a number of unflattering passages about his wife and the other residents of the Secret Annex.” In addition, several passages dealing with Anne’s sexuality were omitted at the time of the diary’s initial publication, in 1947, it was not customary to write openly about sex, and certainly not in books for young adults. “To begin with, the book had to be kept short so that it would fit in with a series put out by the Dutch publisher. She set the scene, described the book’s importance, discussed the war - and then explained that the book had been heavily edited: ![]() The narrator, Helena Bonham Carter, started with the forward of the Penguin edition. I had managed to avoid reading Anne’s diary for most of my life, but not too long ago I decided to give it a go in audiobook form. For me, that knowledge was almost enough to make me boycott the book. But not everyone realizes that the book published under the title The Diary Of A Young Girl is an abridged, reworked, and redacted version of the diary Anne actually wrote. The diary, originally titled Het Achterhuis, is a national treasure to Jewish women and girls throughout the world, and many Holocaust survivors and historians, such as Primo Levi, have said that it serves as a solid representation of the millions of Jews and other oppressed people who suffered at the hands of the Nazi party. The edits on Anne’s diary are more than disrespectful to her memory - they seem to be an act of misogyny.Īnne Frank’s diary, published after its author died in a German concentration camp at age 15, is for many people the defining document of the Holocaust. ![]()
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