By Ross Amico
TRENTON, NJ — For more than six decades, since its publication in 1946, Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” has stood as one of the most poignant accounts to emerge from the Holocaust. Written by Frank over a period of two years, while her family lived in secret rooms atop her father’s office building during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the diary puts a very human face on the destruction wrought by Hitler’s Final Solution. Frank began her diary two days after her 13th birthday. The last entry is dated Aug. 1, 1944. On the morning of Aug. 4, the rooms were stormed and the Franks deported. The identity of their betrayer has never been discovered.
Her mother perished of starvation at Auschwitz. Anne and her sister died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Anne was only 15 years old.
Nearly 70 years after Frank’s death, English composer James Whitbourn turned to the diary for his inspiration in the writing of a large-scale choral work, “Annelies.” “Annelies” exists in two versions: the larger, for full symphony orchestra, and a more intimate telling, for four solo players. Both versions feature soloist and chorus, with identical vocal writing.
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