Diary decoded: Anne Frank’s secrets unveiled, hidden jokes, sex and unexpected lessons revealed with digital discovery
Hidden jokes and sex education have been revealed from the previously undisclosed content of Anne Frank’s diary, thanks to digital technology. The mysterious brown-paper-covered pages of the diary offered a unique perspective of a 13 year old Jewish girl during World War II.
Researchers from the Anne Frank Museum, War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies Institute of the Netherlands, and Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, decoded the obscured text using photography and image processing software.
Thirteen-year-old Anne, wrote a two-page entry on September 28, 1942, less than three months after she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis. She covered the entry with brown paper, leaving its content a mystery for decades.
The concealed content revealed four dirty jokes and Anne’s own dirty explanations about sex, birth control, and prostitution. One joke was about why German Wehrmacht girls were in the Netherlands – to serve as beds for the soldiers.
In relation to sex, Anne described that a woman has her period at 14 and that it’s a sign she’s ready to have relations with a man, but no one would do this before they’re married.
On prostitution, she wrote…
“All men, if they are normal, go with women, women like that accost them on the street and then they go together. In Paris, they have big houses for that. Papa has been there.”
She added more lines about sex education, imagining that she had to lecture someone on the topic.
Experts say the discovery, along with the rest of Anne Frank’s diary content, shows her development as a writer more than her interest in sex. Frank van Vree, director of the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies revealed that dirty jokes are classics among growing children.
“They make it clear that Anne, with all her gifts, was above all also an ordinary girl.”
Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House Museum, acknowledged Frank’s importance in remembering the Holocaust.
“Over the decades Anne has grown to become the worldwide symbol of the Holocaust, and Anne the girl has increasingly faded into the background.”
Leopold said the words resemble other passages dealing with sex that have already been published. However, they are the first examples of Anne creating a fictional situation to make it easier for her to address sensitive topics.
Anne wrote her diary while she and her family hid for over two years, receiving food and necessities from a close-knit helper group until they were captured on August 4, 1944, and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.
Only her father survived the war, whereas Anne and her sister died in the camp when Anne was 15 years old, reported Sanook.
