Anne Frank

Anne FrankAnonymousUnknown author [Public domain]What is a hero? A hero is a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Courage, resilience and such are essential qualities of a hero. For me, Anne Frank is my hero

Anne, full name Anneliese Marie Frank, born on 12 June 1929, was a girl like all the other girls in the world. She had best friends, she had enemies, and she had dreams like everyone else. However, her life was hit by a bombshell when World War 2 began. For the next two years of her young life, she was forced to hide in a tiny room with her family and a dentist and another family as well. Her life had changed drastically, all because she was a Jew. On her thirteenth birthday, she was given a red checked diary that she wrote all her everyday feelings. Her parents had wanted to go into hiding ten days after the actual date they went in, but when her sister Margot received a call up notice ordering her to relocate to a work camp, the family had to flee earlier than expected. They had many friends, kind people who helped them. Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only people who knew of the family in hiding. "Along with Miep's husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, they were the "helpers" for the duration of their confinement." 

She wrote everything that had happened in the two years of her confinement, pouring her heart out. Her feelings towards her family were like any other teenage girl-she fought with her mother, she loved her dad particularly, she argued with her sister and fell in love with the son of the other family. However, her life confined to the tiny room was not the same as other girls. They could not flush the toilet during the day; for fear that they would be discovered. The secret annex was disguised behind a shelf of books, sealed away from sight. However, Anne's story didn't end 'happily ever after'. One day they were betrayed by a new worker then discovered by the Gestapo (German police), and were forced to live in concentration camps along with other Jews. It was a cruel, harsh life, with little food and shoddy environment. Otto, Anne's father, was lucky enough to escape and survive, but the rest of his family and the other family weren't so lucky. Margot and Anne both died of typhus.

Hope wasn't lost then, even though she had died. She got to say what she thought, through her diary that was kept safely with Miep Gies, one of the family's friends. Her father published her diary, completing her final wish, so that everyone across the world, adults and children saw her feelings from those two cruel years shut in a cramped space. It made everyone realize how the Jews felt during the war, forced to flee or hide, like scared mice. She wrote a line in her diary that made me tear up. "In spite of everything, I believe people are really good at heart." She believed that everyone was 'good', even those who made her live the last two years of her life like that.

She is my hero for many reasons. Her courage, her resilience, is something I quite admire. She may not have been the perfect little angel, but that only shows that she is human. Her diary is so startlingly realistic, I feel as if I am beside her, keeping quiet in fear of being dragged off to concentration camps. She is a girl like no other, yet so different. The most heart-stopping part of the diary is when there's a short sentence saying that she was taken to the concentration camp and that's the end of the diary. She was only sixteen. 

 Heroes are people you look up to, and I certainly admire Anne Frank. Her story will live forever in hearts of people, reminding them that war is never good. As the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote of her: "One voice speaks for six million--the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl." A hero is someone who matches the description above. Courageous, noble, truthful. That is Anne Frank.