How do anne frank challenges affect us today?

In this op-ed, Lisa S. Hoffstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, explains the profound relevance of Anne Frank’s legacy today.

“Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”

On April 11, 1944, Anne Frank wrote those words at the age of 14 amid the worst genocide the world has known. Her diary, which has been translated into 70 languages with more than 30 million copies sold, is as much a chronicle of her time hiding in the Secret Annex as it is a teenager coming to terms with who she is as a young woman.

Because of her diary, which was saved by one of the helpers in the Secret Annex, Miep Gies, and published by her father, Otto Frank, who survived the war, Anne’s voice was heard when millions of others were silenced. She was a young woman attempting to flee persecution, and her life was tragically cut short. Along with 6 million other Jewish people, Anne and the majority of her family were murdered by the German Nazi regime for being different. They were victims of evil. They were victims of hatred.

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