Het achterhuis (Dutch Edition)

This is not the newer and fuller edition of "Het Achterhuis," but it's a great buy for the price--print editions are quite expensive, at least in the U.S. The work itself is a masterpiece of autobiography, full of emotional and social insight, never bitter despite the terrible fate she had to endure. It is of course overshadowed by our knowledge of her eventual fate at the hands of the Nazi murderers. The e-book is well-done, and as a Dutch learner I'm very happy to be able to click on an unknown word and have it defined, either in English or in Dutch. A book that should be read by all, in the original or in translation.

Indeed at the same time distressing and encouraging, a real masterpiece of the 14 year old girl. Honest and hopeful in utmost precarious circumstances both in time and in place. The story of eight and more persons in a backchamber during Nazi occupation of Holland.I had read this book some sixty years ago. Since then it long time haunted my mind until gradually disappeared to twilight of forgetfulness. When beginning now I did not remember what finally happened. Not the worst possible, as it now turned out. But what happened to Anne Frank later? That was left open.I myself have lived the atrocities of the war. My home was only 2 km of the present frontier between Finland and Russia. So our family was three times evacuated: the first time mother with three children, the two other times with five children, twins being only two weeks old when the second time. Father being on the front all times. I as the oldest started school in 1944 at the age of 7.But the big difference was that we never had to hide and the second that we, as I understand, had no lack of food being a family of farmers. At that age there were no romances like in the case of Anne. Grandparents followed us, but they were so old that they were more a burden than help in family life.In both cases, in Anne's and in ours, the same question remains: why? Why cannot people tolerate each other, but start using queer politics and automatic weapons to kill people having the same everyday way of living, being parents, sisters, brothers, children with same basic needs of food, clothes and shelter. There are no winners in the wars, but only losers.