The Diaries of Anne Frank and Anna Haag as Acts of Anti-Nazi Resistance
The diary of Anne Frank is rightly recognized as a classic. In this lecture it is contrasted with diaries secretly written during the Second World War by the German democratic feminist Anna Haag. Although an outspoken pacifist, she was never arrested by the Gestapo, so she was able to record incisive impressions of everyday life in the Third Reich: reactions to the imposition of the Yellow Star followed by the Jewish deportations; critical responses to the killing of the disabled at secret ‘medical centres’; the execution of ‘radio criminals’, ordinary Germans who defied the regime by listening to the BBC; the complicity of ‘white collar’ murderers like the judges who imposed death sentences for trivial offences; and the struggle to survive of Jews in supposedly ‘privileged’ mixed marriages.
Where Anne Frank’s observations were necessarily restricted by what she could see from her window in the Secret Annex, the diaries of Anna Haag offer a compelling panorama of the catastrophe of National Socialism. Having survived the war, she was also able to play a leading role in post-war democratic reconstruction.
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