Transcript The Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank
ACT I
Anticipation Guide
 A person’s adventures are limited by his or
her physical mobility.
 War brings out the best and the worst in
people.
 Wisdom comes with age.
 Happiness depends on material possessions
and comfortable surroundings.
Vocabulary
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
conspicuous
unabashed
insufferable
meticulous
fatalist
ostentatiously
Hitler’s Rise
As a young Austrian, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dreamed of becoming an
artist but was twice rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1913,
he moved to Munich, Germany, and at the outbreak of World War I volunteered
for the German army after Austria rejected him for military service. When
World War I ended, Hitler began his political career as a member of the
German Workers’ Party, renamed the Nazi Party in 1920. Soon he became
head of the party, which rose to power on a platform denouncing Jews,
Communists, and the financial burden placed on Germany in the Versailles
Treaty, which ended World War I. Hitler was legally appointed chancellor of
Germany in 1933, but he quickly assumed dictatorial powers. He rigged
elections and combined the positions of chancellor and president to become
Führer, or leader, of Germany.
Hitler’s “Final Solution”
The “Final Solution” was ordered by Hitler and
officially planned at the Wannsee Conference in early
1942. At the conference, fifteen Nazi officials
decided on the administrative details of the plan: All
of Europe’s Jews would be deported to camps in
eastern Poland, where they would be either worked
to death slave laborers or exterminated. Up to two
thirds of Europe’s Jews had been killed by the end of
the war.
Holocaust
Shortly after Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis
began their systematic persecution of the Jews. The
twelve-year period-from 1933 to 1945-of persecution,
imprisonment, slave labor, deliberate starvation,
torture, and mass-murder resulting in the deaths of
some six million Jews has become known as the
Holocaust (“sacrificial destruction by fire”). During
this period, the Nazis also murdered around five
million other people they deemed “inferior”including Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and
political dissidents-but Jews remained the primary
target of the Nazis’ genocidal extermination.
The Diary of Anne Frank
In May 1940, Germany occupied
Holland. During World War II many
people in Europe were put into
concentration camps. Laws against Jews
limited their access to communication,
transportation, and, ultimately, work.
Jews were cut off from the rest of the
community and then rounded up and sent
east. Most were never seen again.
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Franks, who were Jewish, had fled Germany to
get away from the Nazis. After several years in the
Netherlands, they had to flee again. They left their home
in the middle of an ordinary day, with dishes in the sink
and a note placed in a wastebasket to make people think
they had fled to Switzerland. But, they went into hidden
rooms above Mr. Frank’s office. Anne Frank was thirteen
years old when she and her family went into hiding. The
Franks and four other people hiding with them were
helped by Christian friends who risked their own lives to
do so. This play is about life in the Secret Annex based
on the diary that Anne kept.
Paragraph Writing
Pretend you had one hour to prepare to
go into hiding. You can NEVER return to
your home. You can not carry a suitcase; it
would be obvious you were going into
hiding. It is winter, therefore VERY cold
outside and there is limited food where you
are going. What items would you take with
you? How would you disguise these items
and how would you carry them?