I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, where Anne lived in hiding from the Germans with her Jewish family for two years, to avoid the Nazi concentration camps. I bought a copy of her diary while I was there. Visiting the house was haunting, and I'm sure the diary will be as well.

Anne Frank kept a diary from her 13th birthday on 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944. During this time, she lived with her Jewish family and another Jewish family in secret in the upper two storeys of the building where her father worked. The Netherlands was occupied by the Germans, and they were rounding up all Jews and sending them to concentrations camps like Auschwitz.

In her diary, Anne talks openly and honestly about her relationships with the other people hiding in the house, her contempt for her mother, her frustration at being treated like a child, their struggle to survive, and about the constant cloud of fear that they would be discovered hanging over them. It makes for fascinating and harrowing reading.

On 4 August 1944, just more than two years after they had gone into hiding, Anne, her family, and the other Jewish family was arrested by members of the SS and the Security Police. Someone must have tipped them off. They were all sent to the concentration camps, and of the 8 people who hid successfully for over two years, only Anne’s father survived. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, nine months after she was arrested. She was fifteen years old.

After the war was over, Anne’s father returned to Amsterdam, was given her diaries, and decided to fulfil his daughter’s wishes by publishing her diary. The diary, now 60 years old, remains astonishing and excruciating. All that remains of Anne’s ferocious appetite for life … is this diary. It’s haunting reading that will stay with you long after you’ve finished the book.

The Diary of a Young Girl Bookring

This is how it works:

1. Please journal the book when you receive it (so we all know where it currently is), and again when you mail it out (so we know what you thought of it).
2. You need to send the book to the person that appears below you in the list. Please PM them to get their address details. If they don't respond within 7 days, please skip them and go to the next person on the list.
3. Please read and send on the book as soon as you can - I'd suggest sending it on within a month of getting it.
4. It's not a bookrace though, so enjoy reading it.

Members/Location
1. blaisezabini12 - Cluj, Romania
2. TracyR - Wales, United Kingdom
3. celticstar - Shropshire, United Kingdom
4. Back to me! - London, United Kingdom

Mailed the book to blaisezabini12 on 23 Sept.

Picked up today from the post office. Thank you Pieter for organising this ring and thank you for the postcard&tea:)

30 October 05: after precisely one month I finished reading this lovely diary. It was interesting to follow the way in which Anne as a person evolved, the way in which her personality managed to cope with 2 years of isolation.
What made me really sad is the fact that they were caught so close to the end of the war! If they would have managed to resist for some more weeks everything would have been different! At least Anne's desire was fulfilled and her name is being remembered many many years after her death.

I have the address of the next participant in the ring and I'll mail the book tomorrow.
Thank you Pieter for this lovely read.

1 November 05: mailed today to Tracy! Enjoy:)

Received book this morning and am looking forward to reading it. Will get it done as soon as i can and then send it on its travels again.

Unbelievable account of the hardship encountered during the war. The story is heart-breaking but Anne's way of writing probably doesn't begin to show how terrifying it must have been.
She went into hiding a mere child, and by the time she was captured had developed into a young women with a wise head on her shoulders.

I have pm'd the next person on the list for an address so i hope to get this book on its travels again very soon.

Next person on list already has this book so i am at the end of the ring. I have posted this book back home today.
Thanks to TheWhiteLion for starting this.

Yay! My first ever bookring has safely returned to me. Thanks to blaisezabini12 and TracyR for participating. (Thank you TracyR for the postcard!)

Am keeping the book on my shelves for a while, before it will be released into the wild.

This book is being released to the winner of the 7th Tiara Sweepstakes. Congratulations, and enjoy this wonderful book!

Received in the mail as winner of the 7th Tiara Sweepstakes. Thanks.

I read this book years ago when I was about the same age as Anne Frank when she was writing her diary. I look forward to reading it again with the viewpoint of an adult.