05-08-2025
81 years ago, they turned Anne Frank in. Would we save her today?
Monday marked the 81st anniversary of the day Anne Frank, her family and four others were discovered in 1944 by the Nazis after two years of hiding in a living area concealed by a bookcase in a secret annex in an Amsterdam company building.
An informant had turned in the German-Jewish group to the Gestapo, ending their attempt to escape the concentration camps, where they were eventually taken and died, including 15-year-old Anne.
Only Anne's father, Otto Frank, survived. After the war, he found his daughter's diary — the journal she'd kept during their time in hiding, where she revealed her views of life, family and personal growth. He edited it and published it.
The book became an international sensation, a Hollywood movie and one of the world's most powerful documents against the Holocaust. For generations, 'Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl' was required reading in American schools. You didn't have to identify with the angst of a teenage girl to be moved by her words.
What stayed with most of us was her heartbreaking optimism: 'I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,' she wrote.
As we remember Anne Frank, it's worth asking: Could there be an Anne Frank in our time? And if so, how would we respond? I think the short answer is 'yes'— there are Anne Franks today. Young people trapped in war zones, fleeing persecution, and hiding from armed regimes still exist. Some are in basements in Gaza. Others shelter in Ukraine or cross borders from Syria, Sudan or Myanmar.
Some even hide within U.S. borders — from detention and deportation. Frank's dad tried to escape with his family to the U.S., Great Britain and even Cuba, with no luck. The Nazis had in many cases stripped Jews of their German citizenship, leaving them as people without a country.
Who would take them in? It's a situation that rings true today, in light of the Trump administration's war on undocumented immigrants and their removal from the U.S.
Their stories may not be written in ink on checkered paper, but they are out there — shared in text messages, Instagram reels or TikTok videos.
We live with flowery, girlish handwriting in a world saturated with information. I think today the musings of a thoughtful teenage girl would be considered 'blogging' from her hiding place that might briefly go viral, attract some sympathy, and then vanish into the algorithm's rearview mirror.
Would we rescue her? Or would she become just another political flashpoint — debated, doubted as fake and dismissed depending on where she came from, how she looked?
Anne Frank's diary became a symbol of human resilience not just because of her words, but because the world paused long enough to listen. In the postwar quiet, reflection was possible, some observers say.
I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam 10 years ago. The line to enter to see where the teen and her family and friends had hidden for two long years stretched around the block. The hiding place where the group lived felt claustrophobic. I could not have done it without a television, a radio and my cell phone.
I suspect the Anne Franks of our era may be met with hashtags, temporary outrage, or even conspiracy theories. We are quicker to judge than to listen, and in doing so, we often overlook the very humanity Anne preserved in her pages.
The lesson today isn't to deify Anne Frank, but to recognize her in others, as many who championed her after the war tried to do. Would we believe her if she were writing now? Would we repost her videos? Advocate for her safety? Or would we scroll past her TikTok story?
Luisa Yanez is a member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board.
