Deník Anne Frankové (komiks)

In his book The End of the Holocaust, the eminent historian Alvin Rosenveld writes that "probably more people have been introduced to the Nazi period through Anne Frank than through any other contemporary figure, except perhaps Hitler himself". Rosenveld examines the many factors that contributed to Anne Frank becoming a symbol whose significance has not diminished even after more than seventy years. Perhaps this is why I was very hesitant when the Anne Frank Foundation (AFF) in Basel approached me three years ago to not only create an animated film based on the Diary, but also to translate it into graphic form. I was discouraged by the idea of a graphic diary in particular. When I reread the Diary - as an adult and a father of teenage children - I was struck and enchanted: I had no idea that a thirteen-year-old girl could look at the world around her with such a mature, poetic, and lyrical eye, and translate her observations into such concise and thoughtful entries, brimming with compassion and humor, while displaying a degree of self-reflection that I have rarely encountered in adults - much less children. It is an iconic and unique text, and the project presented a considerable challenge: if we wanted to translate the entire text into graphic form, without leaving out a single word, with respect for every letter Anne wrote, we would have produced a work of some 3,500 pages and spent a good ten years working on it. Moreover, it would not have solved the main current problem: the significant decline in the number of children who read, because most of them have succumbed to the magic of the screen. The hardest task was to preserve about five percent of Anne's Diary while not betraying her writing.

Czech edition