Comenius Project

COMENIUS PROJECT THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL BY ANNE FRANK

Josep Rebés Arranz 1st “Batxillerat” 2008-2009 IES Joan Brudieu English Department

INDEX 1.- Introduction (page 3) 2.- Analysis of the book (page 4) 3.- Second World War (page 5-6) 3.1- War crimes ( page 6)

4.- Study of the country and the city were the book takes place ( page 7-9) 4.1- Netherlands in the Second World War ( page 8) 4.2- Amsterdam ( page 9)

5.- Jewish culture ( page 10-12) 5.1- History of the Jews ( page 11) 5.2- Jewish culture ( page 11-12) 5.2.1- Politics ( page 12 ) 5.2.2- Professions associated with Jews ( page 12)

6.- Personal opinion about a passage of the book ( page 13-14) 7.- Conclusions ( page 15)

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1.- INTRODUCTION This is a Comenius Project that studies the book The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank during the Second World War in Amsterdam, invaded by Germans. While Anne was hiding with her family and other people in a secret flat, she wrote about her experiences and her feelings with an excellent use of the language and the vocabulary considering that she only was thirteen. This book shows us how lived Jews during the World War II and how Germans controlled everything in Holland and we’ll work on this. Summarizing, in this project there’s information about the Second World War, about jewish culture and of course, about the book.

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2.- Analysis of the book The Diary of a Young Girl is a book written by Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who was hiding from the Nazi occupation in Netherlands during two years. Anne received a diary for her birthday, and since then she relates how is the life on the top floor of a building in Amsterdam, hiding from the Germans. But, after all, she is a thirteen years old girl and she explains her experiences, but with a point of view different from a person of her age.

It was written during the Second World War ( since 1942 to 1944 ), which is the principal theme and everything focuses on it, because it’s the reason why Frank family left Germany and why they hide from the Nazi forces. It’s a diary, so obviously it’s written in the first person. The vocabulary is not very extensive, but if we think that the writter was a thirteen year old girl it is pretty impressive. Anne made great descriptions and relates everything perfectly ( always having in mind her age ).

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3.- Second World War ( Book context ) World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their complete economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. The starting date of the war is September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. However, as a result of other events, many belligerents entered the war before or after this date, during a period which spanned from 1937 to 1941. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the war as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonisation movements in Asia and Africa, while Western Europe itself began moving toward integration.

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3.1- War crimes Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died because of disease, starvation, massacres, and deliberate genocide. One estimate is that 12 million civilians died in Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis were responsible for the killing of approximately six million Jews as well as two million ethnic Poles and four million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, , homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses…) as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the Nazi Germany.

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4.- Study of the country and the city were the book takes place The Netherlands is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean. The Netherlands is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy, located in Western Europe. It is bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east. The Netherlands is often called Holland, which is formally incorrect as North and South Holland are merely two of its twelve provinces. The word Dutch is used to refer to the people, the language, and anything appertaining to the Netherlands. The Netherlands has an international outlook.. The country is host to five international courts, so this has led to the city being dubbed "the world's legal capital." The Netherlands is a geographically low-lying country, with about 27% of its area and 60% of its population located below sea level. Significant areas have been gained through land reclamation and preserved through an elaborate system of polders and dikes. Most of the country is very flat, with the exception of foothills of the Ardennes in the far south. The Netherlands is a densely populated country. It is popular for its traditional windmills, tulips, cheese, clogs (wooden shoes), delftware and gouda pottery, for its bicycles, and in addition, traditional values and civil virtues such as its classic social tolerance. Being an old parliamentary democracy, the country is more recently known for its rather modern, liberal policies toward drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, and euthanasia. It also has one of the most free market capitalist economies in the world.

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4.1- Netherlands in the Second World War The Netherlands remained neutral in World War I and intended to do so in World War II. However, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940 in the Western European campaign of the Second World War. French forces in the south and British ships in the west came to help, but turned around quickly, evacuating many civilians and several thousand German prisoners of war. The country was invaded in five days, more time than the German High Command and Hitler had planned. The Kingdom as such continued the war from the colonial empire; the government in exile resided in London. During the occupation over 100,000 Dutch Jews were transported to Nazi concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. By the time these camps were liberated, only 876 Dutch Jews survived. Dutch workers were conscripted for forced labour in German factories, civilians were killed for German soldiers, and the countryside was used to produce food for German soldiers. Although there were many Dutch who risked their lives by hiding Jews from the Germans, as in the diary of Anne Frank, there were also Dutch who collaborated with the occupying force in hunting down hiding Jews. The government-in-exile lost control of its major colonial stronghold. During the occupation, the Japanese interned Dutch civilians and used Dutch and Indos alike as forced labour, both in the Netherlands East Indies and in neighbouring countries. This included forcing women to work as "comfort women" (sex slaves) for Japanese personnel. Some military personnel escaped to Australia and other Allied countries from where they carried on the fight against Japan. The Japanese furthered the cause of independence for the colony, so that many young Dutchmen found themselves fighting a colonial war against the new republic of Indonesia.

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4.2- Amsterdam Amsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The city had a population of 747,290 on 1 January 2008. Its name is derived from Amstel dam, indicative of the city's origin: a dam in the river Amstel where the Dam Square is today. Settled as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age, a result of its innovative developments in trade. The city is the financial and cultural capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and 7 of the world's top 500 companies are based in the city. Amsterdam's main attractions, including its historic canals, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, its red-light district and its many cannabis coffee shops, draw 4.2 million tourists annually.

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5.- Jewish culture A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnic and religious group originating from the Israelites of the ancient Middle East. The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated, and converts to Judaism have been absorbed into the Jewish community throughout the time. Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew with many different answers. Generally, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage, and people without any Jewish ancestral background who have formally converted to Judaism.

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5.1- History of the Jews Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, and the areas in which they have resided. This experience as both immigrants and emigrants have shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and are a very important element of Jewish history.

5.2- Jewish culture Judaism has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Except in the modern State of Israel, established in 1948, Jews are a minority in every country in which they live and they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

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5.2.1- Politics Even in religious Judaism there is much room for a range of political or moral views. Jewish culture is often strongly influenced by moral beliefs deriving from Jewish scripture and tradition. In recent centuries, Jews in Europe and the Americas have traditionally tended towards the political left, and played key roles in the birth of the labor movement as well as socialism. While Diaspora Jews have also been represented in the conservative side of the political spectrum, even politically conservative Jews have tended to support pluralism more consistently than many other elements of the political right.

5.2.2- Professions associated with Jews In the Middle Ages, European laws prevented Jews from owning land and gave them powerful incentive to go into other professions that Europeans were not willing to do. As a modern system of capital began to develop, loans became necessary for commerce and industry. In the modern world, intellectual professions have traditionally been considered particularly "Jewish." These include banking and finance, law, medicine, science, social sciences, psychology and academia.

“Jewish banker”

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6.- Personal opinion about a passage of the book Thursday, 25 May 1944 I think that this passage of the book is really interesting, because it is not very long but it is like a summary of the situation of Frank’s family and all Jews during the Second World War.

Anne realises that everything is going down. She says: “Something happens every day now.” meaning that bad things are surrounding them. In this chapter she explains that Germans arrested Mr van Hoeven, the man who brought the potatoes, and this means that the will be less food to eat and everytime is more difficult to provide the Annexe, what means that they will have to sacrifice the breakfast .

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She says that the best people are in concentration camps and prisons, while the worst decide to put them there. That’s a summary of her experience during the war, when she saw the cruelty of Nazis and the weakness of Jewish families. But after all, she never lost hope and fought until the last moment, and that is why I like this passage, because it is amazing to read bad notices explained with the naturalness of a thirteen year old girl.

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7.- Conclusions I think this project is interesting because it shows us the story of Anne Frank so we can see clearly how Jews lived during the Second World War and the difficulties that they had. Reading this book you learn really important values, which you will use during all your live and that will make you a better person. Apart from this, we enjoy reading an amazing book written by a girl who only was thirteen but who seems to be older. Finally, this book teach things that school can’t and show us how hard was the life during the war and that we have to respect everyone, because the religion and the colour of a person doesn’t make him better or worse, simply different.

Bibliography Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Penguin Readers, Level 4, Intermediate. Harlow, England, Pearson Education Limited, 2008. www.wikipedia.com

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