July 23, 2020 by admin

Daisy Maryles

Daisy Maryles is Executive Editor of Publishers Weekly.

I am a child of Holocaust survivors. I was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Ulm, Germany in 1947, the same year the book was published. I read it at 14, about the same age Anne Frank was when she was writing the diary. Not then, or even now, do I think I could be as brutally honest as she was.

In 1999, I visited Amsterdam and her hiding place. I was overwhelmed and could not get over how close it was to the center of town. It would be like being hidden on Madison Avenue. A church nearby had a ringing bell, and the canals were right in front of the house. It was only when I looked through the windows showing what Anne Frank and her family saw and heard that I got a deeper understanding of the tragedy. To be hidden in such a public area was amazing and for me, it made the experience even more tragic. She is only one of a million-and-a-half children murdered by the Nazis. Getting to know her through her diary, you feel an incredible loss. And then you think of all the others killed and how many of them may have been even more special than Anne.

Continue Reading