COMENIUS PROJECT

THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

BY

ANNE FRANK

MARTA TARRÉS CODINA

1ST “BATXILLERAT” 2008 – 2009
IES JOAN BRUDIEU
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
 INDEX

Page

2 – 3 …...………………………………… Historical and social context of the book

4 – 5 ……..…… Study of the country and the city where the novel is developed

5 – 6 ...……………………………..………………. Habits and Jewish inheritance

6 – 7 ...……………………………………………….………... Analyses of the book

- Summary

- Characters

7 ………………………………………. Personal opinion of a passage of the book

8 ………………………………………………..……….. Bibliography and webgrapy

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 ENGLISH
Comenius Project

1. Historical and social context of the book

The Second World War was a conflict made at international scale that took
place from 1939 to 1945.
The precedents were the Nazi policy that looked the expansion of a new fascist
political order in Europe making German becomes a world-wide power.
Hitler mobilized the German people to his
favor.
After achieving power in Germany, Hitler
kept on annexing European countries to the
third Reich.
Hitler consolidated his alliance with Italy and
made a pact of no aggression with the U.S.S.R.

On the 1st September of 1939 the German army

started the invasion of Poland and on the 3rd
September Great Britain and France stated the War
in Germany.

On the 10th May Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium

and occupied Paris. France was divided in an
occupated zone and another one in a supposed way
free but that depended on Berlin.
It was necessary to carry out the invasion of Great Britain for which Hitler didn’t
won the War, but as it wasn’t possible for him and he decided to postpone it; at
the same time the island was been subjected to bombardments.
In the Balkans Hitler achieved the alliance of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and
Bulgaria and occupied Yugoslavia and Greece. With the fall of the Balkans
under Nazi forces, Great Britain lost its last point of support in the continent.
Then Hitler sorted the invasion from the U.S.S.R. without previous declaration
of war (1941) that Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Hungary collaborated in.

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The Russian army, with equipment really inferior to its rival, handed over terrain
very quickly. On 2 October the offensive started against Moscow, but the
climatic conditions hampered the development of the strategy of Hitler and the
Germans halted the battle. On the contrary, Stalin started an offensive with
better equipped troops, who retrieved a part of the lost terrain.

The 7 of December of 1941

Japan, ally of Germany
launched a surprise attack
against the American base of
Pearl-Harbour, now; the conflict
had become a world-wide war
that involved all continents. After retrieving some territories all over the world, in
July 1943 the allies started the invasion of Italy that resulted in the fall of the
fascist regime of Mussolini.
After the conquest of Italy, and at the same time as the Soviet counteroffensive
was being developed, the allies disembarked on the French coast of Normandy
(6 June of 1944). The general advance of the allied troops on the oriental front
was accompanied by an increase in the actions of resistance in the territories
still occupied by the Germans.
On the 12th January 1945, the U.S.S.R. started the invasion of Germany and
after the capitulation of Berlin the German army signed the surrender in front of
the North Americans, the British and the Soviets. The War was decided by the
atomic bombardment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
On the 2nd September the Japanese government signed the capitulation in
front of the United States.

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 2. Study of the country and the city where the novel is developed

Holland is in the north-west of Europe and

in the north and in the west reaches with
the North Sea, and borders Belgium in the
south and Germany in the east.

Holland is a constitutional monarchy that is politically and socially characterized

by allowing the marriage of people of the same sex, prostitution, euthanasia and
the use of drugs.

The language that is spoken in Holland is Dutch, although 70% of the

population speaks also the English.

Frequently the country is known as Holland, a very important historical region.

The name of the country “Nederlanden” (low lands), is because a big part of the
territory is under the level of the sea.

Because of that, in 1953 after some strong floods, a great project called Delta
Plan that joined the mouths of the Rin and the Mosa to avoid other floods was
scouted.

Amsterdam is the capital of the country and one of the most visited places by
the tourists. The population uses the bicycle as the main form of transport. The
most relevant places to visit in Amsterdam are the Van Gogh museum, the
Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank house.

The country is densely populated (16.570.000 inhabitants), and even though

Amsterdam is the capital and the biggest city, the government is The Hague.
Holland is known for windmills, clogs, tulips, bicycles and social tolerance.

Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh or Piet Mondrian were Dutch.

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The cooking is characterized by the great consumption of bread and potatoes.

One of the local dishes is the Erwtensoep, which in a basic way is a soup of
chickpeas. Cheeses are also popular, Gouda, Edam and Leyden being the best.

3. Habits and Jewish inheritance

The Judaism is the religious culture of the Jewish people. The most ancient of
the three monotheist religions and one of the most ancient religious traditions
that are practiced.

Their doctrine is in the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible.

The Sabbath (xabat, Saturday) is the weekly rest and during the day any work
has to be done.

The holocaust was the genocide of the German Nazi

government of several ethnic, religious, national and
secular groups during the Second World War, mainly
of Jews. For the Nazis, the Holocaust represented
the "final solution to the question of the Jews". The
number of Jewish victims is 6 million.

The biblical Hebrew word Shoa that means calamity is the Hebrew word to
designate the Nazi Holocaust

The persecution of the Jews in Holland (140.000 at the beginning of the war)
started a bit after the invasion. Just 40.000 survived at the end of the war.

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 The case of the Jew Anne Frank, who later would
achieve at world-wide fame when her diary, written
while she hid from the Germans, was found and
published, is much known. Anne Frank was discovered
and imprisoned in a concentration camp, where she
died little before it was liberated.

4. Analyses of the book

The book of “The Diary of a Young Girl”, is a narrative text and,

because of this, a primary source.
We can also say that is a historical text, because it explains some facts that
took place between 1942 and 1944.

Summary

Anne Frank herself explains the story and does it through a diary that her
parents give her. She explains in the diary what the annex is like where they
live, what the people sharing the annex are like, and how she spends the days
there. She also explains her feelings and the fear that they have of being
discovered.

In the annex the hygiene was very difficult and food was scarce or sometimes
bad.

In the diary it is also seen that Anne gets along better with her father than with
her mother.

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 The diary finishes suddenly one day, but thanks
to research that was made and to Anna’s father it is
known how the story of Anne continued:

Characters

On the 4th August of 1944 the police discovered the annexe because
somebody had reported them.

The police took Mr Kugler and Mr Kleiman to a prison in Amsterdam and then
to a concentration camp also in Holland.

Bep and Miep weren’t arrested.

The eight people in the annexe were first taken to a prison, and then they were
sent to Auschwitz

Margot and Anne Frank were taken from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp in Germany. A terrible illness attacked the prisoners there.
They both died.

Otto Frank was the only survivor. After Russian soldiers reached Auschwitz, ha
was taken back to Amsterdam. In 1953, he moved to Switzerland, married
again, and spent the rest of his life trying to share the message of his
daughter’s diary with the rest of the world. He died in 1980.

5. Personal opinion of a passage of the book

Page 41 Sunday, 16 of April 1944

I like this part because Anne explains her first kiss with Peter and she explains
what it was like.

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 Bibliography and webgraphy

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl, Penguin Readers, Level 4,

intermediate. Harlow, England, Pearson Education Limited, 2008.

http://www.elcantodelbuho.org/index2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland

http://www.holland.com/es/cultural/