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   akannan Teacher
   Middle School

   eNotes Editor

   The Nazi Occupation of Holland was the period in which Anne composes her diary.  When it became apparent that the Dutch were going to have to endure the same challenges as other nations occupied with Nazi forces, Mr. Frank makes plans to hide he and his family.  The primary focus of these challenges were to identify Jewish individuals as targeted enemies of the Nazi state.  Over time, the policy became referred by many names, yet in the end, the result was always "the final solution" for Jewish individuals.  Hitler and the Nazis believed they could exterminate and eliminate all traces of Jewish individuals in Europe, and through alliances, worldwide.  The process of reaching this end began in small steps that sought to dehumanize Jewish people.  This involved the carrying of forced identity papers, having to mark clothing with symbols that indicated an individual of Jewish ancestry, and escalating this process to forced relocation of Jewish individuals into ghettos, making it easier to capture and kill them or send them to work/ death camps in Germany.  The penalty for Jewish individuals who sought hiding from Nazi control was automatic detainment in a work/ death camp.  This was also the penalty for Dutch individuals who were not Jewish, but helped in concealing Jewish people from the Nazis.  There was a great fear in mere existence and an even greater fear that mere insinuation of being an enemy of the Nazis would result in inescapably horrific conditions.   This is the setting in which Anne is writing her diary.

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   Posted by akannan on Thursday August 13, 2009 at 5:34 AM