The Diary Of Anne Frank

I have just finished watching the five part series on BBC1 all this week, started Monday.

Thirteen-year-old Jewish schoolgirl Anne Frank was given her diary as a birthday present just two weeks before her family were forced into hiding in a concealed annexe of her father's spice warehouse in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

The account she recorded in it of the two years they spent there in cramped, increasingly difficult conditions was to become perhaps the most famous document of the Second World War.

In Frank's writing her constant fear of discovery was leavened with charm and humour and, to begin with at least, Deborah Moggach's five-part adaptation of her diary it has been showing each night this week on BBC 1 at 7pm, focuses not on the fear but on the practicalities and confusions Frank was presented with by her new hermit-like existence.

Ellie Kendrick is brilliant in the title role, with Tamsin Greig as her mother, Iain Glenn as her father and Felicity Jones as her older sister, Margot. Ron Cook and Lesley Sharp play Mr and Mrs Van Daan, with whom the Franks share their hiding place. By way of a companion piece.

The Secret Diary of the Holocaust was also shown tonight, a documentary telling the tragic story of 14-year-old Rutka Laskier, whose wartime diary was found in 2005, hidden at her home in Bedzin, Poland, 62 years after she died at Auschwitz.

It was a heartbreaking watch, very moving, I'm taking it for what it is and am finding it thought provoking and educational as January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day, with Jan typically being seen as Holocaust remembrance month, It's also the 80th anniversary of the birth of both Anne Frank.

There is also documentary on tonight:

Friday 09 January
7:30pm - 9:30pm
BBC4
This moving documentary includes an unexpectedly rich collection of interviews with people who knew Anne, including her father and his secretary, who sheltered the family. It's a weighty, worthwhile film - an ideal supplement to this week's drama series.



You can find out more about Anne Frank at the official website at http://www.annefrank.org