The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

June 29, 1992
With approximately 30% more material than the original 1947 edition, revealing a more rebellious and complex narrator, the new edition of Frank's classic diary spent five weeks on PW's bestseller list.

April 1, 1991
Given the extraordinary popularity of Anne Frank's Diary , notes Dutch filmmaker Lindwer, it was ``inevitable'' that her account would be romanticized; indeed, Anne Frank is especially remembered for having nobly affirmed, during her persecution, that she believed people were good at heart. But, Lindwer adds, ``arrest, deportation, and annihilation are the final unwritten chapters of Anne's diary.'' As if to complete our understanding of what she and her fellow victims endured, Lindwer interviewed six women who were interned in concentration camps with Anne Frank (these interviews formed the basis for Lindwer's internationally aired television documentary of the same name). These six survived perhaps because they were older, stronger or simply luckier than Frank, and their accounts provide horrifying glimpses of camp life and death. Among the saddest images is that of a reunion, across a barbed-wire fence in Bergen-Belsen, of Anne and the friend referred to in the Diary as Lies, during which a ``broken'' Anne (incorrectly) announces,``I don't have any parents anymore.'' These testimonies would be unbearable if they did not also give voice to the courage and dignity of the six witnesses throughout their own suffering. Photos.