The Diary of Anne Frank: A Play

Anne’s older sister, Margot, based on the real Margot Frank (1926-1945), is 16 at the beginning of the play, 18 at the end, and freshly 19 when she dies of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Although the family was already making plans to go into hiding, the catalyst for hurrying and moving up their time schedule was Margot’s vulnerability, as she received a letter ordering her to report to the transit camp at Westerbork for conveyance to a work camp. Therefore, Margot represents the family’s vulnerability as the first member to be directly threatened (at least as far as Anne knows) by the advancing menace of the Nazis. Unlike Anne, Margot is a mature young woman: quiet, sweet, and gentle. Although Anne never portrays her sister with anything but kindness, she is simultaneously exasperated, as her parents hold Margot up as the perfect daughter they wish Anne would emulate. As a character, Margot serves as a foil to Anne, showing Anne’s change and growth into a young woman who becomes more mature but is still very different from Margot. Margot is selfless and a peacekeeper. She reassures her mother that Anne will grow out of her animosity. She tells Anne that she is happy for her budding friendship with Peter, even though Anne exclaims that she would be jealous if Margot had developed a friendship first. Margot’s aspiration to become a nurse for newborn babies is unsurprising given her temperament, but her desire to move far away to pursue it, perhaps to Palestine, is a revelation. It suggests that Margot, like Anne, dreams of shaping her life independently of her family and that she has a deep, unspoken identification with her own Jewishness. Margot is more reserved and self-sacrificing than Anne, but underneath they are both yearning for lives that they will never have.

Anne and Margot’s mother, Edith, based on Edith Frank (1900-1945), identifies far more easily with her quiet, obedient daughter than with the headstrong Anne. Like Margot, Edith is patient and reserved, and she conveys warnings to Anne about her behavior through the tone with which she says her name. She finds Anne’s forwardness frustrating, especially when Anne causes conflict with the van Daans, and makes no secret that she wishes Anne could behave more like Margot. Anne vilifies Edith in the first part of the play, refusing to let Edith comfort her, and even declaring to her father that she doesn’t love her mother. Edith bears her daughter’s rebuffs with stoicism, although it clearly hurts her feelings. She follows Miep to the door to speak privately about her hopelessness, unwilling to burden the others with it. Like Margot, Edith’s constancy as a character serves to demonstrate how Anne changes as she grows up. Edith stays firm in her parenting, even through Anne’s rebelliousness against her, and one day Anne wants to comfort her mother. She starts to see Edith as an ally instead of an enemy. Anne’s uncharitable portrayal of her mother in some of her diary entries was something Anne revised and her father edited after Anne’s death. When Otto gives Edith the music box, the play shows that they have a loving, solid marriage, regardless of the view through Anne’s teenaged eyes. Mr. Dussel highlights Edith’s reputation for fairness when he urges her to cut the cake, but despite Edith’s reserved nature, she shows that she has some of Anne’s unrelenting stubbornness when she catches Mr. van Daan stealing bread. Edith is prepared to throw the van Daans out of their safe hiding place out of a fierce protectiveness over her own family. Edith dies in Birkenau of starvation and fatigue, broken by grief.

Otto, Anne and Margot’s father, is based on Otto Frank (1889-1980), who was the only resident of the Secret Annex to survive the war. An argument might be made for Otto as the protagonist, especially in the original 1955 version, which is framed by scenes at the beginning and end in which Miep gives Otto the diary and Otto’s reading is what spurs the action of the play. If The Diary of Anne Frank is a memory play, it is Otto’s memory as attached to Anne’s words. In a sense, the original version of the play is shaped by the real Otto’s perception of his daughter, as he edited her diary and exercised his rights to refuse drafts of the play until he approved of the way the playwrights shaped the narrative. Otto is warm, thoughtful, and authoritative when necessary, and he is Anne’s favorite parent. From the start, he is more accepting of Anne’s childish quirks and finds pleasure in her enthusiasm, though he also urges Anne toward more agreeable behavior, particularly toward her mother. He inadvertently arouses the jealousy of the van Daans, and Mrs. van Daan awkwardly flirts with him. Otto shows that he is a loving husband when he presents his wife with the music box he saved. The Secret Annex is in the building Otto owns that houses his business, and he wields an unspoken authority over those who live there. He demonstrates this when he immediately agrees to take in Mr. Dussel before the others have a chance to express doubts. He also takes the risk of going down to see about the burglar, and of all the Annex denizens he is one with the most recognizable name and the biggest target on his back. Since the diary ends right before they are all arrested and taken, the presence of Otto in the play serves to connect the humans in the play to the inhumanity they suffered after the narrative cuts off. This is particularly true in the revised version of the play, in which the character of Otto gives graphic details that were likely still unknown in 1955 when the play first premiered.

Based on the real Miep Gies (1909-2010) and given the pseudonym Miep van Santen by Otto Frank for the publication of the diary, she is simply called Miep in the play. Miep is a young Dutch woman in her early twenties who worked for Mr. Frank as a secretary and selflessly took on the dangerous role of helping to hide his family and the others in the Secret Annex from the Nazis. Miep takes care of bringing them the things that they need, but she also brings things to make them feel more human. As the people in the Annex are constantly under threat from the outside world, Miep brings what she can of the beauty and comforts of the outside: books, high heels for Anne to make her feel like the adult she is becoming, cigarettes for Mr. van Daan, a cake when anything sweet is a luxury. She tells Anne stories about her fiancé Jan and the parties they attend. Miep rushes over in the middle of the night, weeping with joy, to tell everyone that the Allies have invaded and the beginning of the end of the war has started. Miep acknowledges early in the play that anything she is suffering is mild compared to what the Annex-dwellers are enduring. The real Miep rescued Anne’s diary and all her writings from the rummaged Annex and saved it all, unread, until the end of the war, despite the potential danger if the pages were found. The original version of the play shows her giving Otto the diary, although this is cut in the revival version.

Mr. Kraler, based on Victor Kugler (1900-1981) and Johannes Kleinman (1896-1959), was another of Mr. Frank’s employees, a Dutchman, who heroically helped to hide the Franks and the others in the Secret Annex. Miep and Mr. Kraler stand in for a total of five real-life people who were involved in hiding the families. Unlike Miep, who takes care of their day-to-day needs and is therefore the most present, Mr. Kraler is running Mr. Frank’s business. When Mr. Kraler accompanies Miep, his presence indicates that there is usually something serious to discuss, such as whether to take in Mr. Dussel or an employee that might be trying to blackmail him. In the original version of the play, Mr. Kraler is so affected by the stress and pressure of hiding the families that he suffers from bleeding ulcers and must undergo surgery, which was true of Kleinman in real life, but this was cut from the 1997 play. Although Otto is in a vulnerable position that strips him of his agency, Mr. Kraler still defers to Otto for important decisions. This, like Miep’s gifts, gives Otto some of the humanity that has been taken along with his rights as a Jewish man living under the Third Reich.

Peter van Daan, a pseudonym for Peter van Pels (1926-1945), is a shy 16-year-old boy (15 in real life) at the beginning of the play when he moves into the Secret Annex with his parents. At first, Anne is pleased at the idea of a boy her own age, but she quickly decides that Peter is inscrutable. Peter recognizes Anne from school (although she doesn’t recognize him) as a girl who talked too much and didn’t know how to be serious. Peter spends as much time as he is allowed alone in his room with his cat, embarrassed and irritated by his parents. Peter, whose teenaged awkwardness makes him switch moods without warning, is a mystery to Anne. The constant scrutiny of the adults—especially his mother, who teases him by calling Anne his girlfriend—makes him painfully self-conscious. He begins to warm up to Anne on Hanukah when she gives him a straight razor. Her acknowledgement that he is growing to be a man suggests that she sees what the adults don’t, and adolescent changes are something that Anne and Peter have in common. He lets himself be silly by playing a joke on the others and pretending to bring his cat into the living room. Peter finally bonds with Anne after his mother hurts her feelings. Much has been made of their teenaged romance in the various representations of Anne’s story, although Anne’s unedited diary showed that their closeness was waning by the time they were captured. As Otto describes at the end of the revised version of the play, he was with Peter at Auschwitz until Peter was taken on a Death March to Mauthausen. Peter became sick and died a few days after the camp was liberated.

Mrs. van Daan, based on Auguste van Pels (1900-1945), is Peter’s mother and a source of conflict within the Annex, particularly for Anne. She grew up privileged, and risks bringing suspicion on the whole family by carrying a chamber pot in a hatbox and wearing a fur coat in July on the street as they went into hiding. Later, her husband blames her for their predicament by claiming that they couldn’t escape town because she wouldn’t leave her belongings. Mrs. van Daan is outspoken and enjoys embarrassing Peter. She annoys her husband and son when she flirts shamelessly with Mr. Frank, bragging about how popular she once was with suitors. Mrs. van Daan and Anne have one friendly moment when she allows Anne to try on her prized fur coat, but it turns to anger when Anne spills milk on it. Mr. and Mrs. van Daan fight constantly, and she infuriates him by comparing him to Otto, but this depiction of her is created through the unforgiving eyes of a teenager. While Anne reconciles the contentious relationships with her mother and Peter, she continues to see Mrs. van Daan as entirely antagonistic. However, Mrs. van Daan’s redeemable qualities surface as well. She cooks for everyone in the Annex, trying her best to make increasingly inadequate and even rotten food palatable. She also defends her son when Mr. van Daan threatens to get rid of his cat and when Mr. Dussel blames Peter for knocking over a chair during the burglary. She also demonstrates that her flirting is only bluster, and she loves her husband. She tries to give him (and not herself) more food than the others, which is a high crime to the other Annex inhabitants but an act of protection toward her husband, and she comforts him after he’s caught stealing bread. As Otto explains at the end, the details of Mrs. van Daan’s death in a concentration camp are unknown.

Mr. van Daan, an alias for Hermann van Pels (1898-1944), like Mrs. van Daan, shows the petty conflict that arises when a group of dissimilar people are forced to live too closely with each other and breed too much familiarity. The van Daans serve as a contrast to the much nobler and kinder Franks. Mr. van Daan is the one to express doubt about taking in Mr. Dussel while Mr. Frank sees it as the only right thing to do. Mr. van Daan fights openly with his wife, unlike the Franks, who avoid conflict with each other in front of everyone else. Mr. van Daan smokes, an expensive habit, and becomes nasty to the others while experiencing withdrawal, and he hurts Anne’s feelings. Mr. Frank tries to protect Anne’s youthful emotions. He indulges Anne’s moments of immaturity, while Mr. van Daan bullies his own son into being more social like an adult instead of a moody teenager. Mr. Dussel’s accusations suggest that Mr. van Daan sometimes benefits from his wife’s uneven serving, and Mr. van Daan also attempts to leave Margot out when the cake is being served, but when Mrs. Frank catches him stealing bread, she sees it as an ultimate act of selfishness and is ready to force him out on the street to fend for himself against the Nazis. Although he is spared by the good news of D-Day, Mr. van Daan’s humanity is revealed in the deep, inconsolable shame he feels for his actions. He becomes pitiful: a desperate starving man who couldn’t control himself. The van Daans show how desperation can bring out the worst in people just as it can, as shown by the Franks, bring out the best. As Otto explains at the end, Mr. van Daan dies in a gas chamber shortly after arriving at Auschwitz.