Anne Frank implied her uncle was gay, new diary pages reveal
Anne Frank
Newly uncovered pages from Anne Frank’s diary seem to have revealed that her uncle was gay.
The Anne Frank House announced on May 15 that new extracts from the Jewish teenager’s famous diary – one of the most-read first-person accounts of the Holocaust – had been revealed.
The pages had previously been “covered up with brown gummed paper,” the museum said, but experts had used “image-processing software to decipher the words.”
(BAS CZERWINSKI/AFP/Getty)
Anne, who wrote about her sexual attraction to girls in the diary, seems to have blocked out the entries because of their risqué nature.
Included on the pages were dirty jokes and writings about sex, libidos and periods.
In one passage, she wrote about her father engaging in the services of prostitutes.
(BAS CZERWINSKI/AFP/Getty)
“All men, if they are normal, go with women, women like that accost them on the street and then they go together,” she said.
“In Paris they have big houses for that. Papa has been there.
“Uncle Walter is not normal,” she added.
Among the jokes told by Anne is one about a husband and wife. She wrote: “A man had a very ugly wife and he didn’t want to have relations with her.
The wax figure of Anne Frank at Madame Tussauds in Berlin (Getty)
“One evening he came home and then he saw his friend in bed with his wife, then the man said: He gets to and I have to!!!!!”
Another of them is more predictable, though perhaps slightly funnier.
She asked: “Do you know why the German Wehrmacht girls are in Holland?
“As mattresses for the soldiers,” she answered.
(Andrew Burton/Getty)
Anne and her family attempted to escape the Nazi regime but were trapped, hiding in Amsterdam.
They were discovered by the Nazis in 1944, and transported to concentration camps. Anne died aged 15 at Bergen-Belsen, not long before the Allies liberated the camp.
Writing about her best friend Jacqueline van Maarsen in the diary, Anne said: “I already had these kinds of feelings subconsciously before I came here”.
She added: “I remember that once when I slept with a girl friend I had a strong desire to kiss her, and that I did do so.
“I could not help being terribly inquisitive over her body, for she had always kept it hidden from me.
(Andrew Burton/Getty)
“I asked her whether, as a proof of our friendship, we should feel one another’s breasts, but she refused.”
Anne added: “I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman, such as Venus, for example.
“It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“If only I had a girl friend!”
On the official Anne Frank website, Jacqueline wrote about her relationship with Anne.
(AFP/Getty)
“We had a close relationship and I liked being with her, but she laid a claim on me and I didn’t know how to handle that.”
She continued: “I always had to prove to her that we were ‘best friends’. Her passionate declarations of friendship were too much for me sometimes.
“Then I met up with other friends and she was jealous and unhappy.”
(Getty)
“Years later I read that she had written about this in her diary.
“But before she went into hiding I had been able to tell her where the limits were.
“She accepted this and it only improved our friendship and made it stronger.”
