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Rev. Joey N. Welsh: Anne Frank, a Legacy in Words


ANOTHER ANGLE: the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor
A LEGACY IN WORDS
From The Hart County News-Herald, June 5, 2005
By The Rev. Joey N. Welsh

Sometimes we encounter words of wisdom from sources that seem unlikely to us. Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929, and she died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945, six weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allies.



She did not live to see her sixteenth birthday, and most of what we know about her comes from a diary she was given on her thirteenth birthday, but what we do know is strikingly memorable.

Shortly after she began her diary entries in 1942 the Nazis began rounding up Dutch Jews for deportation to labor and death camps. Anne and her family went into hiding in cramped quarters in Amsterdam, where they remained for two years until they were captured and arrested on August 4, 1944. Her diary remained behind in the debris at the hiding place, where it had been recovered by the secretary of Annes father, Otto Frank.

Ottowas the only surviving member of his immediate family at the end of the war, and when he was given the diary he took several weeks to read it; he could only bear to absorb it a few pages at a time. A Dutch university professor prevailed on Otto to have the diary published. It was an immediate success in several languages. The English translation received a glowing review in The New York Times, and its initial printing sold out the very next day.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl has remained widely read as a record of humanity gone wildly wrong as well as a testament to hope.

Ann Franks lot in life had had left her little to be enthusiastic about, yet her optimism springs from the pages of her diary in so many places. Whenever I want to mope about my problems in life, I remember Anne Frank and suddenly find lots of gratitude for all with which I am gifted and blessed.

Anne Frank wrote:
  • How wonderful it is that we can start doing good at this very moment.

  • How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

  • I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
Anne Franks birthday is as fine a time as any to think about the things we complain about and put them into a new context, remembering all that we fail to be thankful for.

We can recall Anne Franks positive outlook in the time of trial for her and her people, an era of terror that took place because far too many people stood aside and allowed evil to prevail instead of doing their best to accomplish good.

I read her words, and I am both humbled and challenged

How about you?


This story was posted on 2007-06-17 08:06:23
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