Sheila Sánchez González Ins Baix Camp Reus "Es tracta d'una comparació literària entre Anna Frank i Edith Eger, dues dones que han escrit sobre la seva experiència com adolescents vivint en el període de l'Holocaust i patint les conseqüències d'aquest. Pretenia establir vincles i similituds entre abdues personatges i les seves respectives novel·les per descobrir si havíen pogut coincidir en el mateix camp de concentració. " Humanitats i Ciències Socials Història

1. ANNE FRANK VS EDITH EGER
The girl who died and the girl who never died
Sheila Sánchez González

2. INTRODUCTION AND PROPOSAL
-Comparison between two books based on the Second World War.
-Hypothesis: Did Anne and Edith or any other character from both stories happen to meet in
the same concentration camp?
-Establishment of bonds between both stories.
- Justification of the chosen topic.
-Connection with both characters’ personality.
STRUCTURE
-2nd World War
-Comparison
-Experience in Dachau
-Women’s role in a concentration camp

5. ANNE FRANK VS EDITH EGER
-(1929 - 1945)
-FRANK, Anna. Diari d’Anna Frank. Barcelona:
DEBOLSILLO, eighth Edition, October 2007.
- (1927- still alive)
-EGER, Edith. The Choice. Great Britain:
Rider, first Edition, 2017.

6. COMPARISON
AGE
-Anne would be 89 years old now whereas Edith is 91.
-Imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1944:
- Anne in September, when she was 15 years old.
- Edith in March, when she was 16 years old.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR PARENTS
-Both loved her father’s attention and called them or were called with a loving name.
-Both of them misunderstood their mothers but ended up respecting them.
Differences
Similarities
COMPARISON WITH THEIR SISTERS
-Feeling of loneliness and invisibility next to their sisters.

7. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEIR PARENTS
- Their parents did not get along with each other.
STAR OF DAVID
-They had to wear the “yellow star”, which is the Star of David.
-Feeling of guilty.
WRITING SKILLS
-Writing as a pastime: it was useful for venting their sorrows.
-They wanted the world to know their experience.
LOVE
-They show their feelings towards their platonic love and test their body’s reaction.
ANNE FRANK
·Tales from the Secret Annex
·Het Achterhuis

8. COPING WITH ANTISEMITISM
-Edith: Jews were not segregated and they enjoyed plenty of
educational, professional, and cultural opportunities.
-Prejudice, which caused a sense of inferiority. -
They hid their Jewish condition.
-They were treated as parasites and enemies.
-Town people ran into their homes when they saw them and
children covered their eyes.
-Strict antisemitism rules of German invaders in the occupation
of Holland.
-Nazis separated families without clemency as men, women,
and children were sent to different places.
SEXUALITY
-Sexual thoughts.
-Both talked about it freely and shared their inner feelings.
ANNE FRANK
·Removed pages from the diary
·Research by :
-Anne Frank’s House
-Dutch cultural Institutions

9. NAZI’S CALL
-Both of them mention the moment in which Jewish families
leave their homes in order to escape from antisemitism.
-Apart from Nazis, Edith mentioned nyilas, who sent Jewish
men to labor camps.
-Anne only talked about Nazis as the ones who followed
Jews.
-First “call”:
-Edith’s father (August 1943): he returned seven or eight
months later without talking about what he had experienced.
-Margot, Anne’s sister (July 1942): instead of going all the
family went to hiding together.
FALSE ID CARDS
-Both of them talked about and gave examples about people
who falsified documents in order to avoid Nazis catch.

10. RELIGION
-The Frank family practiced Liberal Judaism, so
they were not orthodox in their faith but they
followed the traditions of Judaism.
-both wrote about her belief in God
-There were moments in which they lost faith
because they saw things did not change despite
praying.
HOPE
-Future plans after the war.
-False hope.
-Lost hope and desperation.
-Piece of wisdom:
-Anne: her future and all the experiences she had not
passed through yet.
-Edith: the words of her mother: “Just remember,” She
said, “no one can take away from you what you’ve put in
your mind.”
OVERCOME HANDICAPS
-Positive mind.
-Critical moments of weakness.

11. FOOD
-Thoughts about cooking and eating.
-Anne:
-In the concentration camp, the dinner consisted in a loaf of bread with a little of margarine.
-In the Secret Annex, diet was based on potatoes and legumes:
·Breakfast: a slice of bread with a substitute of coffee.
·Dinner: spinach and lettuce with sweet and rotten taste potatoes that measured less than 20 cm.
-Shortage of food and starvation.
-Edith:
-In the train car, one loaf of bread and one bucket of water were shared between eight people.
-Arrival to the camp: they received a bowl. If at the time of distributing the food they did not have it, they did
not eat.
-In the thread factory, Edith received better rations of food and hid potato skins in her underwear.
-Liberation: soldiers could only offer candy.
-After liberation: survivors could not eat too much because they were not used to it.

12. SLEEP TIME
-Night = most difficult moment
-Edith explains how they slept upright in the train car.
-Anne: sense of guilt as she could have a sheltered bed and some Jews could not because they were in the
concentration camps.
FATHER’S REACTION TO THE WAR
-Edith: her father was cheerful to see the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the door.
-Anne: her father kept an optimistic point of view despite having political knowledge.
“BATHROOM”
-Edith: in the barracks, they used a bucket (kind of container) as a nighttime bathroom that was shared by all
the members of the barrack.
-Anne: the Annex’s House official bathroom was a jar of canned food also shared by everyone in the secret
house.

13. SURVIVAL SKILLS
-They know the rules for surviving:
-Edith said competition and domination were not useful because the key was the cooperation.
-Anne was always differing from the other people in hiding, but she knew the importance of remaining
together. The outer help was also important because without the cooperation of the factory workers
nothing could have been possible.
PUBERTY CHANGES
-Interested in human biology.
-Both talked about their feelings about their puberty changes.
-They did not received previous information about their anatomy as parents did not mentioned it.
-Edith also comments that, in Auschwitz, women did not get their periods due to the constant distress, the
starvation and the extreme weight loss.
-Anne expressed her feelings about her puberty changes in a remark she made from a book called “What
do you think about the modern adolescence?”

14. DANCE
-They loved dancing and moving freely.
-It kept them alive.
PROFESSION
-Anne: her dream since she was of sound mind was to be a journalist.
- Edith became a therapist after her liberation in order to help other survivors who lived with trauma.
MONEY’S SHORTAGE
-Both of them talked about it in their respective writings as both of them suffered it:
-Anne’s father businesses did not go as he expected because of the economic crisis they were suffering as
an aftermath of the economic crush in 1929.
-Edith had problems with money after being liberated as she expressed it in their book in the part in which
she needed medicine for her daughter and had to go to black market, or when Béla and her could not travel
because they did not have enough money.

15. ROUTINE
-Back House:
- Wake up early, drink tee and go to the “bathroom”.
- Take the darkening panels away and total silence until the workers arrive to the factory at 9 a. m.
- Protectors have a mid-morning snack with the members.
- Listen to the BBC news on the radio.
- Food distribution
- Protectors return to their job and members of the secret place can sleep, study, read, write…
- They can move freely because workers have finished their work shift.
- Night preparations and “bathroom” usage.
(Anne used the opportunity to go to the “bathroom” and dye her black moustache with hydrogen peroxide)
- On Sundays, all is different as they wake up late and destine the day to clean, rest and to their personal hobbies.
-Concentration camp:
- Wake up early
- Tidy up their bunk
- Formation and head count in Appellplatz
- March to work
- Have “dinner”
- Return to the camp
- Evening formation and re-count
- Sleep time

16. HYGENIC CONDITIONS
-Edith expresses how the lack of cleanliness
affected prisoners health (typhus, dysentery or white
lice)
- Anne and her sister died because of a typhus
epidemic.
RIGOROUSNESS AND PERSONALITY
-Anne: her best quality was to know herself.
-She had a conscious that punished her.
-However, the first time she saw the energy and courage that she had, she felt happy and strong as
any adversity could destroy her.
-Edith: the war and the Holocaust experience had a bad impact on Edith self-esteem and confidence.
-She felt guilty because of her mother’s death as she still thinks she could have saved her.
-Feeling of weakness.
MOTHER’S DEATH
-Anne’s mother died from starvation on 6 January
1945 in Auschwitz.
-Edith’s mother, died in the gas chambers of
Auschwitz in May 1944.
“Without prejudice and with a bag full of excuses I stand in
front of the Anne of all days and I observe what she does
right and what wrong”

17. THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
-Experience in Dachau
-
Women’s role

18. CONCLUSIONS
-Amount of time dedicated to this project.
-It has marked a milestone on me. -
Final conclusion of the comparison. -
Complications.
-Supports for doing this project.
-My inner conclusions.
APPRECIATIONS
-My mother Paqui González.
-My tutor Mayte Solé.
-Silvina Cousté (tourist guide).

19. THOUGHTS
ANNE FRANK
“I’m a caged bird whose wings have been pulled
up violently and in the shadows crashes into the
thick bars of its narrow cage when it tries to fly”.
EDITH EGER
“I had lost my childhood to the war, my
adolescence to the death camps, and my young
adulthood to the compulsion to never look back”.
SHEILA SÁNCHEZ
“The nastiness is something that will always
exist in one way or another, and that is out of
our control”.