Lewes Little Theatre - Anne Frank

Anne Frank was fifteen when she died just a year before the end of the war. She and her family had successfully hidden from the Nazis in their makeshift ‘annexe’ home for two years before they were betrayed by an unknown source. Acting on a tip-off, the Nazis raided their hiding place, rounded them up and took them to the concentration camps where they all died (Anne and sister Margot from typhus), except for family friend Peter and father Otto. Days before the liberation of the camps, Peter too, died from exhaustion. Otto was the sole survivor and it was he, a few months after Anne’s death was confirmed who found Anne’s diaries (they had been saved by helper Miep), and decided to publish them - in honour of Anne’s wish to write a book on her experiences after the war.
Otto found in the diaries an emotionally sophisticated daughter that he scarcely recognised, (and, it is rumoured, details of his own ‘loveless’ marriage to their mother). The latter he took out, along with several references to Anne’s burgeoning sexuality. Despite these excisions, this story of a young girl told from beyond the grave, has become one of the most recognisable narratives in recent history, selling over 25 million copies in over 55 languages since it was first printed in 1947. Tonight, Lewes Little Theatre are performing a rehearsed reading of extracts of the diary as a companion to June’s production of Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass, which takes as its theme anti-Semitism in America during the Second World War. ER