"Who is Anne Frank?" 9 year old Dibe asked her mom.
"Yeah. Why does she have a book?" Dibe's friend Patricio asked.
They sat in a circle in the elementary school library, friends and parents. Dibe had just received a lack-luster book about Anne Frank.
Dibe's mom looked over at the teacher then over at the other parents, deciding to answer the second question first, and from it, a leason I never forgot.
"Anne Frank has a book," Mom explained as the whole circle stopped talking, "because somebody once said that if you don't learn from the past, you are doomed to repeat it."
A dozen confused faces returned her statement.
"A long time ago, a whole group of people were hated. And there was a man who he could fix the problem by killing them all."
I looked at the picture of the girl on the book cover, She was hardly older then me. She couldn't have done anything.
I glared at mom, "that can't be true."
Other parents chimed in, affirming that indeed it was true.
"Why?"
Questions tumbled around from the multitude of 4th graders.
Slowly the parents described the horrors of the holocaust and Anne Franks' involvement. It was a sad conversation, one I never forgot.
Well, several years later my family was going to Europe on vacation. I had two destination requests, Auschwitz death camp and the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. At 12 years old, perhaps I was morbid. But mom refused the former, and agreed to latter.
The tour of the Anne Frank house was intense. Heart breaking and devestating. And life changing.
Mom bought me the Difinitive edition of the Diary of Anne Frank. Since then, I have read and reread the book over a dozen times.
This weekend, I went to open my book again and found the binding almost torn apart from a lot of use. So, I finally retired the book and decided to replace it with the edition I've been eye balling since 2003, the Revised Critical edition. To say I'm excited for its arrival would be an understatement. Yes, I am a nerd
