我第一次“见面”安妮·弗兰克when I was in the fourth grade — she was 13 to my more childish 10. I discovered this older, wiser big sister-like girl in the same place I found many of my most fascinating elementary school companions: in the children’s section of my local public library. Like so many of the characters I found among the rows of bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling, we became quick friends.
但是这relationship felt a little different than the other ones I formed there. At first, I thought it was because it was the first time I was aware that a book I held in my hand was written by someone like me: a Jewish girl with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes who wanted to be a writer. While at that age I didn’t quite understand the quiet power in that — just as I was too young to fully understand the trauma, tragedy, and magnitude of安妮的故事and the Holocaust — I did know that it felt significant to me at the time, even personal.
It has been nearly 40 years since I first devoured that paperback edition ofThe Diary of A Young Girl。But I recently realized that she would have celebrated her 91st birthday on June 12, had she not died at Bergen-Belsen. Amidst a global pandemic and widespread protests against racial injustice, I decided it was time to make her acquaintance once again.
So this week, I reread her diary from cover-to-cover. It was an eye-opening experience: I hardly recognized either of us anymore. Anne, of course, remained a teenager, while I got to grow up. I got to go to college and graduate school, to travel, write, and get married. I became a mom to my two children, who are now 17 and 13 — the same age as Anne when she started the diary she called Kitty.
当我第一次读到安妮的编年史在躲藏了两年，我不能把书放下。很多个夜晚，我采用的古老的手电筒，下了钢圈招我本来是要睡觉的时候。这一次，我也读The Diary of A Young Girl到深夜为我的丈夫和两个少年睡着了。
然而这一次，我常常不得不强迫自己翻开新的一页。不是因为写作的质量 - 相反，我惊叹的智慧，机智和叙事这一显着的少年的声音 - 但因为情绪的强度，我觉得。
疼痛，我觉得作为一个成年人阅读关于生活at Prinsengracht 263 through Anne’s young eyes made it an excruciating exercise. Often the most seemingly mundane details of Annex living flattened me, like the shorthand correspondence course that was ordered for Margot, Peter, and Anne, or the detailed家教计划完成艺术史，神话，圣经历史，荷兰文学，代数和几何。我一直在想这个策略的比例约为占领他们的孩子的天，正要对未来的希望有多大比例。
These details — treated by Anne as almost parenthetical asides in the narrative — shouted at me through the years and pages about what Otto and Edith Frank, terrified and overwhelmed themselves, were doing to keep life normal for their孩子们在躲藏。（同样，也为赫尔曼和奥古斯特·凡·佩尔斯，彼得的父母，谁在附件中与弗兰克斯和弗里茨·普费弗藏了起来。）这让我不仅想象自己在阁楼上，但几乎感觉不到自己的存在。
I felt what it must have been like, as a parent, to do something as mundane as playing a board game with your family while worrying about not having enough food to nourish your kids. I felt sick to my stomach imagining myself having to give my son codeine in order to quiet a cough that could tip off the police, as the Franks needed to do with Margot. I had to stop reading, leave the house, and pace up and down my street when I spotted a previously unseen-to-me photo of Anne that looked so much like my own 13-year-old daughter, right down the shape of her eyebrows and the slope of her nose that she could have been a third sister.
比什么都重要，我觉得每一页上，并在每个条目不能够让您的孩子安全的噩梦。当我读到The Diary of a Young Girl在10岁时，安妮的青少年反射跳下页。我与她沉思她想象的成年生活，她与她的母亲打架;我想象我自己第一次接吻时，安妮经历了她与彼得。50岁读的书，我看到的梦想是从未有过的成长的机会。
Today, 75 years after Anne’s death, here in the United States, other young dreams are not given the chance to grow. Black people in this country still cannot keep their children safe. The黑人的命也是命运动，这一刻我们需求的，因为它应该，我们看到所有儿童的痛苦，就好像我们是他们的父母。If we don’t, it’s hard to make a case that anything has been gained from Anne’s story — along with other harrowing stories from others, who both look like her and don’t, who have also had their too-short lives snuffed out.
在她的日记，安妮写道：1944年6月13日，一个条目，对前一天 - 她的15岁生日，在最后一个生日，她活到看到。每个人都在附件中，与谁帮助他们隐藏个人，连同礼品赠送她。从玛戈，她接到一个金手镯，从彼得牡丹的“可爱”的花束，并从她的父母，一个五卷艺术史的书，一套内衣，两条带，手帕，酸奶的两个锅，一个果酱的锅，两个小蜂蜜的饼干和植物学书籍。
在什么应该是安妮的91岁生日，我不敢想象她会喜欢今天收到的礼物。相反，我选择承认她给了我们所有的大礼：及时提醒如果，在任何时候，我们看到自己在谁是隐藏在附件中的人 - 或为充满仇恨的人谁使他们寻求这种绝望的避难所 -我们的反应必须是个人和水晶般清晰的为她的写作。
我的第一个副本的标语一个年轻女孩的日记阅读：“我们发现谁是永远沉默了数以百万计，一个声音遗体提醒我们安妮·弗兰克的-the声音。”我感谢她不断提醒我。
由Grace Yagel头图像设计。插图由Wachiraphorn / Getty图像
