How can we be kind to each other, to other creatures, and to the world?
Anne Frank on Kindness

How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves!
As with so many things, most people seek justice in very different quarters, and grumble because they themselves receive so little of it.
Open your eyes, be fair in your own dealings first! Give whatever there is to give! You can always—always—give something, even if it is only kindness!
This is from Anne Frank's Diary, March 24, 1944. I had the full essay framed on my wall when I was growing up. My mother still has it somewhere. This is a slightly different translation, but it's the parts that I feel are important. She would have been about 15 when writing this. At age 15 she understood the power that everyone has to change the world by just being a bit kinder to those around them.




This always gets me choked up.
I'm sorry. :( I really do love the quote, though.
No apologies: I love it. Her story and her diary just - it's a beautiful text that lives on long after her, and it means that -- in a very real way -- she continues to live. The multi-generational impact is immense. ANd it's perfect because it's written by an adolescent and it's... maybe easier for more people to digest that way. There is an earnestness in the face of so much harsh reality.
This is lovely. <3
"Give!" from the Tales from the Secret Annex, March 26, 1944.
I remember reading the essay when I was 10 years old, and it was featured in the interactive "Anne Frank the Writer" online exhibit at the USHMM. I actually read her diary again a few months ago - it's striking how much more I understand now than when I read it 11 years ago as a 4th grader.
You have the correct date. I did not. I taught it to my seventh graders years in a row. And every single year I understood and got something else out of it. I think discussing it in a group with kids that age made a difference, too.
It's actually kind of intriguing how I got a renewed interest in the Holocaust - it was after hearing about how Donald Trump would not rule out special identification for Muslims, and how German refugees were denied entrance to the US because of fears they could be Nazi spies. It really made the events of that time seem more relevant today, given the alt-right sentiments running high in the Western world.