Anne Frank

War diaries: we read them to see the wars through the eyes of those suffering them and to see who the sufferers are; we read them to search for a personal touch among countless banal lectures on the inhumanity and ordeals of wars; often, too, we read them to find some lessons, to see if we can learn anything from those raw accounts. In Anne Frank, we find a girl who "still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." In Dang Thuy Tram, we find a devoted patriot, a conscientious doctor, a wholly affectionate person, and a heroic martyr. Through their eyes, we see the war with bombardments, executions, and cruelty, but also with inalterable hope and faith in humanity. Nonetheless, whatever we think we learn from these writings, when we have a look at the diarists' lives, especially in light of their deaths, the one thing that remains is how condemnable warfare is.

Without WWII the diary of Anne Frank seems like everyone's favorite bildungsroman. Initially frustrated and rebellious, she matured and become sympathetic to other people. At the same time, she reflected on herself and her place in the world, and voiced her aspiration, while trying to maintain hope in a return to normal life and belief in human's good nature. Put in the context of the war, it is unbearably tragic. All her coming of age is put to an abrupt end by the arrest of the Jews.

Dr Dang Thuy Tram's diary tells a different story. Her writings was filled with anguish, both from the successive deaths of her comrades and from her jumbled sentiments. The diary, besides being a truthful and moving account of the war and the fine line between life and death, also gives us a look into the feelings of the young doctor. Despite all the pain war brought, she was still devoted to the country and felt passionate affection for her kins. But Dang Thuy Tram had to die too: she died heroically fighting 120 U.S. soldiers alone to protect her patients.

One feature that distinguish this two diaries from many others of survivors is the message of hope.  They were always hoping for peace before they die. The survivors, especially Holocaust survivors, are broken though they can still stand on their feet. They are disillusioned forever. We read their words to see the destruction done to the soul. But we read Anne Frank and Dang Thuy Tram to see the preservation of the soul. Hence it is tempting to jump to conclusion about their purported optimism, that despite all the bloodshed and dehumanization of wars, the purest and most hopeful part of humanity are still buried within people. Still, lest we drown ourselves in the ocean of sweeping generalizations about hope and redemption, we should always stop and question ourselves: why did these people have to die? Why should Dr. Tram, the sweet, pure, hearty yet strong, determined and loyal patriot, the conscientious doctor and loving daughter, the elegant and thoughtful Hanoian, have died? Can her immortal image in our hearts compensate for the fact that she is lost?

Anne Frank's death was even more tragic. She was just an adolescent. She had just begun to experience love and known who she aspired to be when she was arrested. Faith could not help her: she was demoralized. Hannah "Hanneli" Goslar testified to the most ironic episode of Anne Frank's death. As told in the diary, a Jew and Anne's best friend, Hanneli was arrested while Anne was in hiding. Hanneli's face often recurred in Anne's dreams, which filled her with survivor's guilt. Yet it was Hanneli who survived and witnessed Anne in the camp "a broken girl" before she died. What lesson is there to justify the fact that she is already dead, and her murderers escaped the judgment of justice?

The diaries do not give us redemptive meaning either. Throughout Anne's life in hiding, we saw a Jewish girl who, in addition to being surrounded by death threats every day, was also emotionally repressed. Dang Thuy Tram occasionally wrote about a day when peace would be regained and imagined her life afterwards, but she always reminded herself that she and her comrades might die anytime, before the country is independent again. Both of them never found freedom from war and from a troubled mind in their lifetime.

Diaries are not meant to be literature; neither do they exist to teach us anything. They are only the voices of the diarists, who, in desperate need to be heard, could only pour their heart out on the pages. Rather than teaching, they let us come to know the diarists as lively people. We enter their mind, absorb their words, and reflect on their genuine thoughts and emotions. A reader of war diaries needs to empathize. That is the only way we can feel abhorrence without the need for facts and figures, stop discussing wars in terms of pros and cons, and quit judging on their significance and political implications. Through the eyes of the involved we understand that only one thing is true: all wars are deplorable.

Nowadays, wars still linger. From the Middle East to Eastern Europe, they tear nations apart, sustain political tensions, and violate human rights. So how are the diaries relevant to the world today? Their cry for peace is drowned amidst the sound of guns and bombers. In the chaos of war, few had time for poignancy and reflection. Diarists are in a special place: Anne Frank in hiding had enough security to reflect on her world. Dang Thuy Tram was a field doctor but did not have to directly participate in battles. In stark contrast to the presence of these pure and hopeful people, in many places crimes against humanity are still perpetuated. After the Shoah there were the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides. The gas chambers and crematoria may be gone, but crucifixion and decapitation have re-emerged. Terrorism is the new political weapon. International alliances agonize over which measure to take. What implications, then, do two books have in the face of such chaos?

Hopeless as it may seem now that we ask ourselves that question, there is a nuanced answer: they give us a cause to cling to peace, freedom, and democracy. Just as we can cling to minor incidents of hostility to wage wars, so can we rely on a small, subtle symbols of hope and humanity to try to build the world a better place. When people go around killing in blind faith, we carry the unquestionable belief in the goodness of human.

We strive to preserve the memory of people like Anne Frank and Dang Thuy Tram not because their hope and beliefs are exemplary, but because they both reflect and inspire ours. When warfare shatters all meaning, we refuse to accept that it is the inescapable violence. Though we cannot shrug off the painful memories of the past, we decide not to be imprisoned by them, and not to repeat them in the future. War diaries are first and foremost like mirrors that reflect the unspeakable horror of wars, and we have no right to discuss lessons of goodness and progress unless we first face the horror.