Watch an encore performance of Masterpiece Classic’s The Diary of Anne Frank Friday, July 20, 2012 at 1pm or 7pm on KCPT2.
Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday in June 1942. The following month she and her family go into hiding in the secret annex behind her father’s business in Amsterdam to escape the Nazi roundup of Jews. An unusually perceptive writer, Anne records events in the annex over the course of the next two years.
Eventually, the Franks (Otto, Edith, and daughters Margot and Anne) are joined by the van Daans (Hermann, Petronella, and their teenage son Peter) and by Mr. Dussel, a middle-aged bachelor. Together, the eight Jews experience the stresses of air raids, food shortages, lack of privacy, break-ins, and the perpetual fear of being discovered,
But there are joys too: birthday parties, games, weekly baths, radio broadcasts, contact with sympathetic outsiders, and in due course the encouraging news that Allied troops have landed in France and are advancing against the Germans.
Through it all, Anne observes her little world with a sensitive and lively intelligence. She falls in love, falls out of love, plays childish pranks, and displays remarkable maturity. Then one day she finds her life’s vocation — if only she can live long enough to fulfill it.
