Like many a junior high school girl before me, I discovered Anne Frank’s diary just when it seemed most appropriate. I was thirteen, the same age as Anne when she began writing her diary, a dark-haired, moody, often misunderstood youngest child, and in Anne I felt that I had found a kindred spirit. I sympathized with Anne as she argued with her mother, sighed when she snuggled with Peter in the attic, and sobbed the angry tears of a child just beginning to understand absolute evil upon learning exactly what had happened to Anne and the other members of the Secret Annex.

I eventually accumulated more and more books about Anne’s life in an attempt to make sense of everything, and when I wanted to boggle my mind I would gaze at photos of Anne as a toddler, smiling in the sunshine in Frankfurt, the German city in which she was born, and try and imagine the universe I lived in as the same universe that led this happy child to a death from malnutrition and typhus in the filthy hell of Bergen-Belsen a decade and a half later. Even today I cannot fathom it. I have learned so much since then about the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and think I understand everything, but all I have to do is glance through one of my books and see a sixty-year-old image of Anne Frank playing hopscotch on a sidewalk in Amsterdam, and my illusions are instantly shattered.

With age I have come to appreciate this child’s diary on a much deeper level. My self-absorbed thirteen-year-old self could only take heart in Anne’s and my similarities, but today I can look back at Anne’s life and mine with the wisdom of almost-adulthood; I am now nearly five years older than Anne was when she died, and through her life I can appreciate the greater magnitude of the talent wasted in that greatest of tragedies. I read the diary now and come across the beginnings of an amazing clarity and intelligence; however, I choose not to romanticize it. I am amazed at the number of ways Anne’s story has been interpreted in the years since her death, particularly when she is mythologized into an ideal child, surpassing normal adolescent wisdom, but to me the very humanness of her tragedy is what makes her so compelling.

Last summer I was lucky enough to travel to Amsterdam and see Anne’s hiding place during the war for myself. In addition to carrying away several of the less common books about her, I came away with a renewed appreciation for the girl whose life and death have forced me to look at the world in different, and often critical ways. Somewhere in the back of my mind we are still “kindred spirits”.

Anne Frank Stichtig. Anne Frank: A History for Today. Amsterdam: Anne Frank House, 1996.
 This is the catalog for the “Anne Frank: A History for Today” photographic exhibit, shown in the Anne Frank House in 1996. It plotted the story of Anne Frank’s life alongside the rise of Nazism, and also showcased present-day examples of racism and discrimination.

Anne Frank Stichtig. Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story. Amsterdam: Anne Frank House, 1992.
 This an early edition of the Anne Frank House guidebook, explaining the significance of various rooms throughout the office building and Secret Annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam as well as the visitor’s center.

Anne Frank Stichtig. Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story. Amsterdam: Anne Frank House, 2001.
 The most recent edition of the Anne Frank House guidebook, revised and expanded, including photographs of the refurbished Secret Annex as it looked during the war.

Anne Frank Stichig. Die Welt der Anne Frank/Anne Frank in the World. Amsterdam: Anne Frank House, 1985.
 This is a bilingual German/English catalog of the photographic exhibit “Anne Frank in the World”, which was shown in dozens of cities throughout the world during a run of more than ten years. It displayed photographs of the Frank family alongside several aspects of daily life in the Third Reich and occupied Europe during Anne’s lifetime.

Frank, Anne. Anne Frank’s Tales From the Secret Annex. New York: Bantam, 1994.
 This is a mass-market paperback collection of Anne’s lesser-known writings while in hiding. It includes the fables, children’s stories, personal essays, and an unfinished novel that occupied Anne’s time while not writing in her diary.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Bantam, 1993.
 A mass-market paperback edition of the classic diary, with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. New York: Anchor, 1996.
 This is a first-edition paperback copy of the definitive edition of Anne’s diary, containing 30% more material than the original. It includes previously “inappropriate” entries in which Anne deals with her mother, her sexuality, and day-to-day life in the Secret Annex.

Gies, Miep and Alison Leslie Gold. Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of theWoman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
 This first-edition paperback tells the life story of Miep Gies, who worked in Otto Frank’s office before the war and later helped to hide the people in the Secret Annex for more than two years, delivering food and buoying spirits all the while.

Gold, Alison Leslie. Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend. New York: Scholastic, 1997.
 This first-edition hardcover children’s book describes the close friendship between Hanneli Goslar and Anne Frank from early childhood to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and describes Hanneli’s survival and life after the war in Israel.

Graver, Lawrence. An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
A first-edition hardcover book that charts the rise and fall of Meyer Levin, a American Jewish writer whose greatest wish was to write a stage adaption of the Diary but lost the opportunity with the publication of the world- famous version by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and died a broken man. An interesting look at differences in opinion of how the Diary and its message should be brought to public attention.

Lindwer, Willy. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
This first-edition paperback features the stories of seven women who were imprisoned in the concentration camps Westerbork, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen along with Anne and her sister Margot Frank. They describe their lives before the war and in the concentration camps, along with the eventual deaths of the Frank girls in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945.

Müller, Melissa. Anne Frank: The Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.
This is a hardcover copy of the first English edition of the acclaimed German biography. Müller was praised for the amount of research done to clarify all aspects of Anne Frank’s life, and to shed light on “the person behind the myth”.

Van der Rol, Ruud and Rian Verhoeven. Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary, A Photographic Remembrance. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1995.
A mass-market paperback children’s book packed with photos of Anne Frank and her family during the course of her life; it explains the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, and other related issues in easy-to-grasp terms.

Van Maarsen, Jacqueline. My Friend Anne Frank. New York: Vantage Press, 1996.
A small first-edition paperback written by a childhood friend of Anne’s, describing her friendship with Anne and her life during and after the war.

Wilson, Cara. Love, Otto: The Legacy of Anne Frank. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1995.
A first-edition hardcover book describing a remarkable pen friendship that sprang up between a young fan of Anne’s diary in California and Anne’s elderly father in Switzerland; Otto Frank advised the author and many other young people throughout the world through his letters until his death in 1980.