Anne Frank Remembered – BBC4/The Diary of Anne Frank – BBC1

[mrs_emma_peel]

Anne Frank Remembered – BBC4

BBC4 Friday 9th January 2009 7.30-9.30pm



The Diary of Anne Frank – BBC1

BBC1 Monday 5th January – Friday 9th January 2009 7.00-7.30pm



Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945)

2009 is the 80th anniversary of the birth of Anne.



Anne Frank Remembered is the 1995 Academy Award winning documentary film by Jon Blair about the life of the diarist Anne Frank and is one of the finest, best researched documentary films I’ve ever seen.



The documentary complements the new BBC1 series:

The Diary of Anne Frank shown across 5 nights

Monday 5th January – Friday 9th January, 2009 7.00-7.30pm







Anne Frank is played by Ellie Kendrick, her sister, Margot Frank, is played by Felicity Jones; Anne’s father, Otto Frank is played by Iain Glen; Anne’s mother, Edith Frank is played by Tamsin Greig;

Mr Kleiman is played by Roger Frost, Mr Kugler is played by Tim Dantray, Bep is played by Mariah Gale, Miep is played by Kate Ashfield, Hermann van Daan is played by Ron Cook, Petronella van Daan is played by Lesley Sharp and Peter van Daan is played by Geoff Breton.



The Diary of Anne Frank has been adapted by Deborah Moggach (Pride and Prejudice) and is a Darlow Smithson production for BBC One … produced by Elinor Day and directed by Jon Jones



Anne Frank Remembered:

Oscar-winning documentary about the life and legacy of the 15-year-old whose diary records two years in hiding in an Amsterdam office building during World War II. The film combines personal testimony, family letters and rare archive film with contemporary footage, telling her story from her childhood in Frankfurt and Amsterdam to her capture and death in Bergen Belsen in 1945.



Her father Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947.



The documentary was made in association with Anne Frank House, Walt Disney Pictures and the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was originally screened as a TV documentary, but was later given a theatrical release by Sony Pictures.



The film is movingly narrated by Kenneth Branagh and extracts from Frank's diary are read by Glenn Close. The choice of an adult reader is unusual in representations of Anne Frank; Blair has explained that he read Frank's diary as a child, and had a very clear image of what she was like, and found that the use of children's voices robbed the viewer of their own impression of Anne Frank.



Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945) was a Jewish girl born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.



Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany, and were trapped by the occupation of the Netherlands, which began in 1940. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building.



Miep Gies, the woman who had helped shelter the family, and who had saved the diary after the group was betrayed, collaborated with Blair and is interviewed about her memories of hiding the Frank family. Blair also uses interviews with Hanneli Goslar and Jaqueline van Maarsen, two of Anne Frank's friends, and notably uses archive interviews of Otto Frank to retell Anne's story.



Blair filmed in the real locations of Frank's life; including the neighbourhood Anne grew up in, the "Achterhuis" of 263 Prinsengracht (where she and her family lived in hiding) in Amsterdam, and the Westerbork and Auschwitz Concentration Camps. Blair commented that Auschwitz had been filmed a number of times, for many reasons, however he wanted to suggest something of the "ghosts" of the people that had passed through there, and so he determined that the only way to do this would be to film at night. He was also able to obtain a train similar to those used during World War II to recreate the scenes of people being transported to Auschwitz.



After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, within days of the death of her sister, Margot Frank.



The film was made in association with Anne Frank House and includes 7 extraordinary seconds of film footage of Anne Frank herself - the only known film footage ever taken of Anne. The short film was made in 1941 of a wedding in the Amsterdam suburb where the Frank family lived. The camera cuts for just seven tantalisingly brief seconds to a balcony – where we see Anne Frank watching the bride and groom on the footpath below.



This brilliant film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1996.

The Academy Award was jointly collected by Jon Blair and Miep Gies, who received a standing ovation.

[CaptainWaggett]

It's a superb documentary and well deserved its Oscar but there were some 'interesting practises' involved. Basically the director hired a cinema and ran it with the projectionist and an ice-cream seller watching for a couple of showings so as to qualify for the required number of public viewings. But I assume they all do that...



Worth watching just for the moment when Mr Pfeffer's son (don't call him Dussell - that was the rather insulting nickname Anne gave him because she used pseudonyms to cover anyone's unusual name) meets Miep Gies. Who is still alive BTW. I'm very much looking forward to the series.

[oxfam1uk]

I may watch this dramatisation, but I must say the trailer seemed a bit odd. Everyone looked very clean and well-fed, no sign of wartime privations.



And has the BBC suspended its policy of "racially-correct" casting ?

[mrs_emma_peel]

The Terrible Fate of the 8 Annex Occupants



Anne Frank’s Diary:

“Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report.

Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves… transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews. Miep told us about someone who'd managed to escape from there. It must be terrible in Westerbork.”



“Will this year, 1944, bring us victory? We don't know yet. But where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. We'll need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come …”



4 August 1944, Morning:

SS sergeant Karl Josef Silberbauer along with at least three Dutch security Police, probably acting on a tip-off, raided the Annex and arrested all the occupants and two of the helpers. The following is the terrible fate suffered by the 8 occupants of the secret Annex …



The Fate of the 8 Annex Occupants:

They were all transported to a prison in Amsterdam, then to Westerbork and deported on 3 September, 1944, on board the last transport to leave Westerbork to Auschwitz.



Anne and Margot Frank were transported to Bergen-Belsen at the end of October 1944, and during the typhus epidemic of winter 1944-5 caused by the camp's horrendous conditions, Margot, unable to walk, died first … Anne died a few days later, in late February-early March 1945. The camp was liberated by the British, just one month later, on 12 April, 1945 .



Otto Frank was the only one to survive, he edited the first release of the diary and remarried, dying on 19 August, 1980.

Edith Frank died of hunger and exhaustion on 6 January, 1945.



Auguste Van Pels (Petronella Van Daan) was transported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, to Buchenwald, then to Theresienstadt on 9 April, 1945. She was then transported to another concentration camp after that; it is certain she did not survive.

Hermann Van Pels (Van Daan), according to Otto Frank, was gassed in Auschwitz in October or November, 1944.

Peter Van Pels (Van Daan) was forced to participate in the 'death march' between Auschwitz and Mauthausen; he died of exhaustion on 5 May, 1945, three days before the camp's liberation.



Fritz Pfeffer (Albert Dussel) died on 20 December, 1944, in Neuengamme concentration camp, after transferring from either Buchenwald or Sachsenhausen.

[ringsider]

I have just seen "Anne Frank Remembered", recorded from BBC 4. Two thoughts.



Brilliant TV, bravo to the BBC for showing it, but why not on BBC 1?



I hadn't previously realised the tension between Anne and her mother. For me it only served to make Anne more real, more like someone you might know in your own family.



Regards - Bernard

[mrs_emma_peel]

Incredibly moving final episode of The Dairy of Anne Frank BBC1.



The final intense scenes of fearful, desperate panic and terror, portrayed so brilliantly by the cast, were really very affecting and upsetting.



The scene where Albert Dussell calmly takes the very frightened Anne’s shaking hands in his, and helps fasten on her scandals, was absolutely heartbreaking. The final freeze frame endings charting the fate of each individual Annexe occupant, ending with Anne herself, looking back upwards towards the Annexe, were devastatingly emotional.



Superb cast and performances … outstanding debut performance by newcomer Ellie Kendrick as Anne made this series one of the best adaptations ever on the Anne Frank story.

The excellent documentary Anne Frank Remembered BBC4 perfectly complemented this BBC1 series.

[orpheum]

Although i have been to Amsterdam i have never been to the Anne Frank House.This programme has given me the desire to correct that ommisssion.

[CaptainWaggett]

name='ringsider']I have just seen "Anne Frank Remembered", recorded from BBC 4. Two thoughts.



Brilliant TV, bravo to the BBC for showing it, but why not on BBC 1?

It was shown on BBC2 on a Saturday evening on its first airing back in 1995 but I guess BBC4 is the channel for serious documentaries now.

[earlb]

name='mrs_emma_peel']Incredibly moving final episode of The Dairy of Anne Frank BBC1.



The final intense scenes of fearful, desperate panic and terror, portrayed so brilliantly by the cast, were really very affecting and upsetting.



The scene where Albert Dussell calmly takes the very frightened Anne’s shaking hands in his, and helps fasten on her scandals, was absolutely heartbreaking. The final freeze frame endings charting the fate of each individual Annexe occupant, ending with Anne herself, looking back upwards towards the Annexe, were devastatingly emotional.



Superb cast and performances … outstanding debut performance by newcomer Ellie Kendrick as Anne made this series one of the best adaptations ever on the Anne Frank story.

The excellent documentary Anne Frank Remembered BBC4 perfectly complemented this BBC1 series.

I couldn't have put it better myself Enema Peel. Earlier last year I visited the 'Holocaust road show' at Southwell which was very moving. And to think that we humans consider ourselves civilised.

[batman]

Unfortunately, mainly due to work, I have missed all this series. Does anyone know of a repeat date or a DVD release?

[earlb]

Bats they announced a repeat showing to be decided soon but I didn't get the info'- sorry

[mrs_emma_peel]

Thanks earlb ... bats ...

I think the BBC announcer said The Diary of Anne Frank will be repeated on 24th January, 2009.

The DVD of the BBC series is released from Amazon.co.uk £8-98 on 12th January, 2009 – have pre-ordered a copy.

[batman]

Cheers .... I will get a copy.

[mrs_emma_peel]

My part in Anne Frank’s Diary ... by Deborah Moggach



Fascinating article on the BBC adaptation, writing and production of The Diary of Anne Frank written by the BBC series adapter Deborah Moggach … Mail Online:



My part in Anne Frank’s Diary ... by Deborah Moggach … 4th January 2009

BBC series adapter, writer Deborah (Pride and Prejudice 2005) Moggach gives her unique insight into the teenager who produced one of the classics of the Holocaust.





Ellie Kendrick as Anne Frank in the new TV adaptation



We're standing outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in the pouring rain.

Real rain, plus torrents of water from a rain machine because you can't rely on nature.

Everyone is freezing – the actors are wearing rubber long johns under their costumes.



Queues of tourists, waiting to get into the building, stare at the lights and cameras.

We're filming the very beginning of the story: the fateful day when the Frank family, fleeing the Nazis, arrive in the pouring rain at Mr Frank's office.

It's upstairs, in secret rooms at the back of the building, that the Franks disappeared into hiding for two years, in the company of another family, the van Daans, and a middle-aged dentist.



During this period, Anne wrote a diary, never to know that it would become one of the best-loved books of all time, for in July 1944 the eight of them were betrayed, discovered and sent to the concentration camps.

Only Otto Frank, Anne's father, survived.

Adapting Anne's diary, and watching it being filmed, has been a fairly emotional experience. Hardly surprising, really. But back to the beginning.



May 2007, London



The production company, Darlow Smithson, has spent nearly two years negotiating for the rights to the diary. There have already been several TV versions and a movie but most have used biographies rather than Anne's actual words. Thanks to the prestige of the BBC, and Darlow Smithson, the rights are finally granted.



Even Steven Spielberg hasn't managed to get them – he's been trying to make a film for years.



I'm hired to adapt the diary into five half-hour episodes, to run nightly for a week.

The BBC is anxious to bring the diary to a new generation – teenagers who'll discover that Anne was just a normal adolescent, like them, who happened to live in extraordinary and terrible times.



With her, we'll live through the quarrels with her parents, the privations, the tensions, the sudden bursts of high spirits. We'll start with her 13th birthday party, when she was given the diary, and end when it abruptly ends, when she is just 15.



Like many people, I read the diary when I was young. Now, on re-reading it, I'm struck by how contemporary Anne is - stroppy, obsessed with boys, with her looks, beady and rebellious, highly critical of her mother. In other words … a thoroughly modern teenager.

In past adaptations, she has been somewhat sanctified - a bit cheeky and talkative maybe, but also over-sweet.



I want to be true to the real girl. Sure, she got on people's nerves; but she was also full of life, her own sternest critic and, above all, she made people laugh.

During those two years, cramped into that tiny space, Anne grew and changed profoundly. She deepened in spirit, she discovered herself as a writer, she pondered good and evil and questioned the very meaning of being human. She even fell in love.



My challenge is to chart this journey and shape each episode into drama – quite a challenge when, by the nature of things, the daily routine is pretty repetitive.

What do the eight of them do? They peel potatoes, they squabble, the lavatory gets blocked, they read the paper, they peel more potatoes, they have a joke.



The real drama, of course, thrums beneath the surface.

Not surprisingly, the relationships between them all were complex and volatile. Because it's a diary, we see them only through Anne's eyes. I want to hint at another story between the grown-ups - a story Anne doesn't notice. Yet keep the focus firmly on Anne.



16th June, 2007, Amsterdam



Elinor Day, the producer, and I visit the Anne Frank House. Nearly a million people come here each year and they kindly let us in an hour before it opens so we can wander around alone. The annexe is hidden behind a bookcase, up a labyrinth of stairs, in the backhouse of the building. It will be difficult to make the geography clear.



The same goes for the daily rules. Otto Frank ran a spice-and-pectin business downstairs; only the office staff, who courageously looked after them and ran their errands, knew that eight people were hidden in the building. During working hours, when the store-men were on the premises, the inmates upstairs had to stay quiet.



During lunch-breaks and weekends they could be more relaxed. And if they were in the attic, they could be freer and even look out of the windows at the famous chestnut tree and church spire.

At night they could creep downstairs, to work in the lower office, listen to the radio, take baths. But they often broke their own rules - after all, they were only human.



It's very upsetting to stand in Anne's tiny bedroom. Her photos of film stars and royalty are still pinned to the walls. First she shared this room with her older sister Margot. After a few weeks, however, Mr Pfeffer arrived (he's called Mr Dussel in the diary). He was a 54-year-old dentist, and, inexplicably, he was moved into the bedroom with Anne, while Margot moved into her parents' room.



At first, Anne tried to make the best of it but soon things became insupportable, not least because Mr Dussel dominated the tiny desk to do his work and Anne desperately needed the space herself, to do her schoolwork and write her diary.



To be a teenage girl must have been frustrating enough in those conditions. But to share a tiny bedroom with a full-grown stranger who snored and did vigorous callisthenics, and destroyed any possible privacy – it's hard to imagine anything worse.



Anne considered him a hideous old man but in fact he was a handsome sportsman, in the prime of life.

And he was desperately lovesick – his common-law wife, a Christian, had no idea where he was and he kept smuggling letters out to her, putting everyone in danger. Throughout, I shall have to think of the story from his point of view, too.



We also visit the Franks' apartment, a mile away across the city.

This is a rare privilege - it's not open to the public.

I'd expected somewhere musty and old-fashioned. Much to my surprise, it's in a modern development with big windows, and light and sunny.

I keep forgetting that the Franks aren't creatures of history; if Anne had lived, she would be 78. Many people who knew her are still alive; in fact, next week we're off to Basle to meet Anne's favourite cousin, Buddy Elias.



20th June, 2007, Basle, Switzerland



Elinor and I have lunch with Buddy in Basle, where he still lives in his mother's house - Anne's grandmother's house.

Buddy is a twinkly, dazzlingly charming actor, now in his 80s, whose speciality was ice-skating routines.

Anne was mad-keen on skating, too. She often came here to stay.

Buddy remembers her with enormous love; he shows us photos of her and her special little chair. It's as if she's only just left the room.



After lunch, he takes us up into the attic. Anne kept her diary - many loose pages besides the original book - in her father's briefcase. When the Gestapo came, they emptied the briefcase and filled it with the Franks' valuables. After they'd gone, one of the office staff found the diary scattered on the floor.



When the war ended and only Otto returned, she gave it to him and it was to Basle that Otto eventually returned, with his new wife. For the next seven years the two of them lived in this small attic room, while he worked to get the diary published.

What impulse took him back to an attic? How fascinating is that?



July, 2007, London



Now that I'm writing the scripts, I keep bumping into people who have some connection – actors who played Otto in a touring production, a neighbour who knows Otto's stepdaughter.

I live in Hampstead, which helps … it's such a Jewish neighbourhood.



An old friend tells me how he went into hiding at the same time as Anne, all alone and aged five. He was put into a safe house a few hundred yards from Otto's office and then sent to live in the Dutch countryside, where he was given a new name and identity and went to a Christian school.

As an adult, he returned to live in Amsterdam. Amazingly enough, his actress daughter played Anne on the recordings when the Anne Frank House first opened.



September, 2007, London



We have a terrific director, Jon Jones. He, Elinor and I work on the rewrites. The diary is so rich, so funny, that it's painful to cut anything. We also have to cut most of the exteriors – the budget is too tight.

We decide to capitalise on this – we go into the annexe, with Anne, and we stay with her throughout, living her claustrophobia.

We're going to shoot it in a film studio in the East End. It's thrilling to watch as a faithful replica of the annexe is built, freshly painted and then immediately aged, to look shabby. A bookbinder recreates the diary, weaving an exact replica of the famous checkered jacket.



7th September, 2007



Suddenly, the casting has fallen into place. Seventeen-year-old Ellie Kendrick is to play Anne and Felicity Jones her sister Margot. They are both thrilled that Green Wing star Tamsin Greig is to play their mother.

Ian Glen is to play their father, and has his head shaved to resemble the balding Otto.

Geoff Breton plays the teenage Peter, whom Anne considers dull when he joins them in the annexe but with whom she has a touching romance. Lesley Sharp and Ron Cook play his parents, Mr and Mrs van Daan.





Favourite: Anne wrote on this 1942 photo: 'This is the photo as I would wish myself to look all the time. Then I would maybe have a chance to come to Hollywood.'



The complex relationship between these two families underlies the drama. The van Daans were more vulgar than the Franks, they quarrelled furiously and then had noisy makings-up; the contrast between them and the refined, educated Franks was a source of much tension.

And then into the mix comes the dentist, played by Nicholas Farrell.



Suddenly it's all go – costume fittings, rehearsals.



Even I have a costume fitting as I'm going to be an extra.

Ellie's hair is cut into Anne's style; I watch a calligraphy expert teaching her how to write Anne's script. Ellie comes to live with me for the six-week shoot. She arrives carrying her little cardboard suitcase, like a refugee.



She looks so small and frail; already she is Anne. It's a huge part, a daunting responsibility, but she seems unfazed. Though still at boarding school, she's already done some TV work.

At 6am a unit car arrives to drive her to the set. Her departure wakes me up, so later I find myself asking ‘Anne': ‘Could you possibly be really quiet around the house, so nobody can hear you?'



15th September, 2007



They've started filming and I keep finding excuses to visit. There's something very upsetting about the frail little plywood box, our annexe, marooned in the middle of a vast studio.

It almost pulsates with anguish, laughter and tears.

The studio is in Stratford. The Olympic stadium is being built outside and the thump, thump of the pile-drivers keeps interrupting the shoot.



When we're going for a take, we phone the construction company who then stop the noise – in theory.

But the builders are so behind schedule they refuse. Thud, thud. Instead of the Allied bombardment, the poor Frank family are suffering another sort of attack.

Our cast and crew are working under bruisingly tough conditions and a punishing schedule, all because there's not enough money.



Back home I switch on the telly and there's £18 million man Jonathan Ross interviewing Keira Knightley and Simon Pegg and every single question is some ghastly innuendo about getting their kit off.

It's jaw-droppingly vulgar.



Emotions are running high. I watch our actors shooting the scene where the Gestapo arrive. I can't get into the tiny annexe. I just watch the Nazis enter and then, at the end of each take, see Anne Frank and the others stumble out, their faces ashen. They're stumbling into the safety of a studio, but we are all conscious of how different it was in real life; this is a film about real people, soon to be murdered.



19th October, 2007



We've been filming for weeks now and the crew are getting feral.

Everyone looks haggard. The Frank family, in their shabby Forties clothes, sit eating fish pie in the canteen. They've grown very close, travelling on this extraordinary journey together - a journey, of course, which is all out of sequence.

This morning, Jon shot the Franks' arrival in the annexe. After lunch, he filmed a scene two years later. To save money on set-building, he's shot all the bedroom scenes first.

Those rooms have now been destroyed and rebuilt as the living room/kitchen. We can't afford to build the full annexe.



I watch the rushes. Ellie's performance touches my heart. Having recently adapted another iconic book, Pride And Prejudice, I reflect that Anne Frank has a lot in common with Jane Austen's heroine.

Like Elizabeth Bennet, she's a witty, intelligent girl who rebels against her mother, and whose older sister is more beautiful, obedient and just a bit duller than she is.

Anne wanted to become a writer. I believe the turning point came in 1943 when the Dutch government issued a radio request for people to keep accounts of their lives.

Until then, Anne had lots of other dreams – to be a champion ice-skater, a movie star.

From then on, she wrote with a fury.



5th November, 2007



I'm still writing voiceovers – another quarrel for the van Daans.

On set, they're shooting a scene where Otto unblocks the lavatory. Props have concocted a disgusting mess, made of malt loaf and Weetabix.

Ours is the smelly version; other adaptations have sanitised the conditions in the annexe but Anne herself was characteristically frank on the subject.



10th November, 2007, Amsterdam



So here we are, sodden in the rain outside the Anne Frank House.

It's our last two days of filming.







Yesterday they shot the Frank family hurrying through the streets on their way into hiding.

Today they're shooting Anne's point of view from the annexe, when she peeped through the curtains to catch a glimpse of the outside world.







I'm an extra, dressed in Forties coat and hat; I'm ‘woman walking over bridge, pausing to talk to woman on barge'.



And it's over. We hug each other and drink a beer. The crew packs up; the actors go back to the hotel, to have a bath and get ready for the wrap party later tonight.

The costumes are packed up. In the morning everybody will fly back to England.



I sit for a while, gazing at the Anne Frank House across the canal. Night has fallen and its windows are dark. The hour chimes from the Westerkerk clock, the same chimes that punctuated Anne's short life. Riverboats chug along, filled with music and laughter.

I think of those endless months when people walked past, carrying on with their lives, oblivious to that invisible young girl behind the curtains. And I think of the gift she left to a world that treated her, and so many millions of others, with such astonishing brutality.



I just hope we've done justice to it.

[CaptainWaggett]

Interesting article - thanks. I did think the triumph of this adaption was the way it dealt with Pfeffer/Dussel - showing him from both Anne's point of view and then as a completely isolated man both because he was without his family (Anne didn't know he had a son her age) and the only Orthodox Jew in the hiding place. And for me the most moving moment in the series was after the arrest when Anne is completely frozen with terror and and Dussel helps her with her shoes...



Coincidentally I saw Ron (Mr Van Daan) Cook in Twelfth Night today (as Sir Toby) and it didn't seem as funny as it was meant to that he is expelled from Olivia's house with only a suitcase...

[thatllbetheday]

name='CaptainWaggett']Interesting article - thanks. I did think the triumph of this adaption was the way it dealt with Pfeffer/Dussel - showing him from both Anne's point of view and then as a completely isolated man both because he was without his family (Anne didn't know he had a son her age) and the only Orthodox Jew in the hiding place. And for me the most moving moment in the series was after the arrest when Anne is completely frozen with terror and and Dussel helps her with her shoes...



Coincidentally I saw Ron (Mr Van Daan) Cook in Twelfth Night today (as Sir Toby) and it didn't seem as funny as it was meant to that he is expelled from Olivia's house with only a suitcase...

Strange how life and art interact. These two events coincidentally juxtaposed gave you a new perspective on a play. I have seen a production of Twelfth Night where Malvolio is incarcerated in a small caged box at the end and it is not played for laughs.

[ringsider]

name='earlb']I couldn't have put it better myself Enema Peel. Earlier last year I visited the 'Holocaust road show' at Southwell which was very moving. And to think that we humans consider ourselves civilised.

Sorry, but I think this is a massive over-generalisation. and I for one don't deserve this block condemnation. I am civilised.



I have never ever hurt anyone in my life, except in self defence. I have never done anyone down for self advancement. For 25 years I was a pretty good office manager (with only two regrettable incidents), and I am proud of the promotions I was able to help my staff achieve.



I am kind to pets and old ladies, and would be kinder still to any young ladies prepared to enter my life. I pay my taxes and give blood.



What happened re the Holocaust, was particular to Germany in the 30s and 40s. The german people voted Adolf Hitler to power (was it 1933?). The large majority of them actively or passively supported the rise and rise of the Nazis, even when blood was spilled on the streets of their cities. They supported the evil men and women who staffed the SS and Gestapo. That poem (or whatever you call it) about the german people standing by while first the jews, then the gypsies, then the communists were taken away, until there was no-one left to prevent the common man being taken away, is entirely correct. Sophie Scholl and her family and friends were very much the exceptions that prove the rule.



Regards - Bernard



P.S. I do, of course, accept that there were good germans, but how many actually did something. Would Mosely have been challenged successfully in Germany?

[earlb]

name='ringsider']Sorry, but I think this is a massive over-generalisation. and I for one don't deserve this block condemnation. I am civilised.

Of course it's a generalisation and can only be that. Like you, I've never done any harm or intentionally hurt anyone but some people are less civilised than others. We are primitive beings no matter how you package it up. When we think of Nazis,Japanese or the former Yugoslavia or indeed the Congo, one has to wonder how the human mind can stoop to such degradation in such a turmoiled mental state. The answer? we're pack animals. We may be human but what drives us to these primitive instincts and how much would it take under duress to respond in a similar manner. It WILL happen again.

[mrs_emma_peel]

The Diary of Anne Frank - BBC2

BBC2 Saturday 24th January 2009 5.30-6.30pm

Very welcome repeat showing … beginning with the first two episodes being shown back to back - of the superb BBC adaptation by Deborah Moggach of The Diary of Anne Frank.



Anne Frank started to write her diary on her 13th birthday in June 1942, just two weeks before she and her family were forced to go into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

Starring: Ellie Kendrick, Iain Glen, Tamsin Greig, Felicity Jones, Geoff Breton, Lesley Sharp

Director: Jon Jones

[mrs_emma_peel]

Anne Frank Remembered - BBC4/The Diary of Anne Frank - BBC4



Anne Frank Remembered (1995)

BBC4 … Monday 11th January 2010 … 10.00-12.00am



‘She is perhaps Hitler’s best known victim …’



Very welcome repeat showing on BBC4 of Anne Frank Remembered … the sublime, meticulously well-researched 1995 Academy Award winning documentary … movingly narrated by Kenneth Branagh …



The documentary film was made in association with Anne Frank House and includes 7 extraordinary seconds of film footage of Anne Frank herself - the only known film footage ever taken of Anne Frank. The short film was made in 1941 of a wedding in the Amsterdam suburb where the Frank family lived. The camera cuts for just seven tantalisingly brief seconds to a balcony – where we see Anne Frank watching the bride and groom on the footpath below.



Superbly complemented by an extremely welcome repeat showing of the absolutely brilliant … desperately heartbreaking and poignant BBC adaptation by Deborah Moggach of … The Diary of Anne Frank (2008)

Dates and timings for the first 3 of 5 episodes …

BBC4 … Tuesday 12th January 2010 … 7.30-8.00pm

BBC4 … Wednesday 13th January 2010 … 7.30-8.00pm

BBC4 … Wednesday 20th January 2010 … 7.30-8.00pm



The BBC production featured an outstanding cast and crew …







Top row … DVD cover … scenes from the BBC television production …

Second, third and bottom rows of photo-montage shows the real-life heroic occupants and their secret helpers of the secret Annexe at the ‘Achterhuis’ of 263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, Netherlands and their actor/actress counter-parts who portrayed them so authentically … the cast, adapter and director brilliantly tell the tragic tale of the secret Annexe … the bravery and heroism … fearfulness and poignancy … terrible injustice and fate … with the truth and justice … that this extraordinary story deserves …



Second row …

Anne Frank … Ellie Kendrick

Otto Frank … Iain Glen

Margot Frank … Felicity Jones

Edith Frank … Tamsin Greig



Third row …

Albert Dussel … Nicholas Farrell

Hermann van Daan … Ron Cook

Peter van Daan … Geoff Breton

Petronella van Daan … Lesley Sharp



Bottom row …

Miep Gies … Kate Ashfield

Mr Kleiman … Roger Frost

Mr Kugler … Tim Dantay

Bep Voskuijl … Mariah Gale



Additional cast …

SS Oberschfuhrer Silberbauer … Robert Morgan



Production team …

Adapter … Deborah Moggach

Director … Jon Jones

Producer … Elinor Day

Executive Producer … (Darlow Smithson) John Smithson Executive Producer … (BBC) Polly Hill



This was my comment about the series both on Britmovie and the BBC Diary of Anne Frank web-site forums in January 2009 …



Mrs Emma Peel … England … 2009-01-11 …

‘Many thanks BBC for the absolutely superb The Diary of Anne Frank - brilliantly adapted by Deborah Moggach.

Incredibly moving final episode …



The final intense scenes of fearful, desperate panic and terror, portrayed so brilliantly by the cast, were really very affecting and upsetting. The scene where Albert Dussell calmly takes the very frightened Anne's shaking hands in his, and helps fasten on her scandals, was absolutely heartbreaking.



The final freeze frame endings charting the fate of each individual Annexe occupant, ending with Anne herself, looking back towards the Annexe, were devastatingly emotional. Superb cast and performances … an outstanding debut performance by newcomer Ellie Kendrick made this series one of the best adaptations ever on the Anne Frank story. The excellent documentary Anne Frank Remembered BBC4 perfectly complemented this BBC series.’



The final scene of the final episode is one of the most moving pieces of television I have ever seen.

Emma



Before the hiding place was completely ransacked by the Nazi authorities … Miep Gies quickly retrieved Anne’s discarded diary, notebooks and papers from the floor … Miep kept the diary and documents safe and secure in her own locked desk drawer for Anne's return at the end of the war.



However, when it was tragically confirmed that Anne and Margot Frank had died a horrific death in Bergen-Belsen … Miep Gies … who had tried so desperately to save Anne and the occupants of the Annexe … retrieved and preserved the only pieces of documentary evidence of this extraordinary story … Anne Frank’s own diary and notebooks.



Anne and Margot had been transported to Bergen-Belsen in late October 1944 and that during the typhus epidemic of winter 1944-5 caused by the camps horrendous conditions, Margot, unable to walk, died first … Anne died a few days later, in late February-early March 1945.



Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British on 12th April, 1945 just one month later.



Miep gave the diary, notebooks and collection of papers to the sole survivor from the secret Annexe, Anne's father, Otto Frank.



The last survivor of the story of Anne Frank and the secret Annexe …

Dutch heroine Miep Gies will be 101 on Monday, 15th February 2010.



Sources: BBC The Diary of Anne Frank/DigiGuide/Wikipedia/Mrs Emma Peel