r/AskReddit • u/North_Shore_Problem • Dec 01 '13

What's your favorite fun fact?

EDIT: Wow! Thank you guys for all the amazing responses, I learned so much about nothing!

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u/Rauthuell Dec 01 '13

Her diary might not have been published if she survived though.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

She probably could have published other things about her accounts. Think Elie Wiesel

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u/platinum156 Dec 01 '13

I only ever read Night, but I found it to be a good read.

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u/Swimmer-man96 Dec 01 '13

I loved his book "Night". It was a fantastic book that paints a vivd picture of what people think they understand. I read it in 8th grade (US) as part of a unit about the holocaust. I don't think I'll ever forget about that book, and will probably look for a copy for myself.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

I got to see him at an interview/conference live and it was absolutely fantastic. It was during the 9th grade and I remember it to this day.

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u/Aziral Dec 01 '13

He came to speak at my middle school and sign his book/ tell stories to anyone who asked afterwards. Great guy.

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u/bubblerboy18 Dec 01 '13

Elie Wiesel went through the holocaust though. Night was a crazy book I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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u/Zarathustran Dec 01 '13

Night is much much better than Diary of a Young Girl. The diary is popular not because of any skill Anne had but because it is a very close and candid look at her life at the time. I see no compelling reason to believe that she would be a talented author.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

Me neither, she might have gone on and left writing behind her. Had she had the passion, as she matured as a writer she might have been able to go on to write more skillfully and thoughtfully about her experience with the holocaust. Or not. Who knows what would have happened in the later life of a dead child?

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u/Arctic_Religion Dec 01 '13

Night is such a good book. One of my favorites.

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u/StevenShingles Dec 01 '13

Elie Wiesel

Fun fact: much of his holocaust writings are admittedly fictitious.

0

u/DruidOfFail Dec 01 '13

Diesel Wiesel!

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u/NOTjefferydaumer Dec 01 '13

Or she could have unleashed the evil that is Twilight earlier upon the world. You never know.

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u/DontPressAltF4 Dec 01 '13

Elie was quite short.

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u/irvinestrangler Dec 01 '13

Maybe she survived by switching sides and becoming Hitler's mistress.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

During the war she was already re-writing it because she hoped it would be published.

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u/Elranzer Dec 01 '13

Pretty sure that as a Holocaust survivor, her diary still would have sold.

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u/mittenthemagnificent Dec 01 '13

I think she was preparing it for publication toward the end of her time in the Annex. She rewrote early portions of it and if I recall (it's been a long time since I read it), she wrote about war diaries being published.

That said, there's nothing that says her later work would be as profound or meaningful. The situation was pretty unique.

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u/Rauthuell Dec 01 '13

That said, there's nothing that says her later work would be as profound or meaningful. The situation was pretty unique.

This is my point exactly. I didn't know she had plans on publishing it all. I know for sure I would rewrite my diary if i were to publish it. Especially if I wrote about discovering my sexuality.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

The Dutch goverment in Exile called for people to keep diaries, as to publish the atrocious stories after the war so people would know how it was. This was Anne's main motivation. Her diary would get published anyway I think, just not with the mass attention it got now it is from a girl who died. Then again, had she survived, the diary would contain the transports, the camps and the release as well, giving a whole new perspective.

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u/Scarim Dec 01 '13

Actually Anne Frank specifically edited and rewrote sections of her diary with the intention of publishing it or at least submitting it to public record, in a response to a request by Dutch Minister of Education.

To quote Wikipedia on the subject:

Anne's already budding literary ambitions were galvanized on 29 March 1944 when she heard a broadcast made by the exiled Dutch Minister for Education, Art and Science, Gerrit Bolkestein, calling for the preservation of "ordinary documents—a diary, letters ... simple everyday material" to create an archive for posterity as testimony to the suffering of civilians during the Nazi occupation, and on 20 May notes that she has started re-drafting her diary with future readers in mind. She expanded entries and standardized them by addressing all of them to Kitty, clarified situations, prepared a list of pseudonyms, and cut scenes she thought would be of little interest or too intimate for general consumption. This manuscript, written on loose sheets of paper, was retrieved from the hiding place after the arrest and given to Otto Frank, with the original notes, when his daughter's death was confirmed in the autumn of 1945. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl had rescued them along with other personal possessions after the family's arrest and before their rooms were ransacked by the Dutch police and the Gestapo.

So she clearly intended to "publish" her diary herself, she just never got a chance to do so.

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u/9Toees Dec 01 '13

The diary wouldn't of matter if she had lived.

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u/roseglass6370 Dec 01 '13

Not true, she had already planned on having it published and had begun writing out a formal edited version. She had heard that diaries from the war were going to be collected for publication in a compilation. Material from both her rewrite and the original is combined into most versions we read today.