Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929–early March 1945) was a German-born Jewish from the city of Frankfurt, who wrote a diary when she was a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl while in hiding with her family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.. The diary chronicles her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. In it she described daily life in the back anexe, the isolation and the fear of discovery. Frank, her family and four other Jewish friends hid from the Nazis in a small Amsterdam apartment, until their arrest in 1944. They were sent to Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. Anne died in Belsen of typhus shortly before the end of the war in 1945. Anne's diary survived the war.

In Japan, Anne Frank quickly became identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war. She has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution. Hillary Rodham Clinton referring to racist war in Sarajevo, Rwanda and Somalia. said that Anne Frank diary was “awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young”. John F. Kennedy discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech, and said, "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank. Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it." He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle against apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies.

The diaries of another teenager Nina Lugovskaya, called “ I Want to Live: The Diaries of a Young Girl in Stalin's Russia”, recounts what it was like to grow up in Stalin's Soviet Union. It has been hailed as Russia's answer to Anne Frank.

Nina was 13 when she began keeping her diary; like the Amsterdam schoolgirl, she was writing in the shadow of one of the 20th century's most repressive regimes. In 1937, at the height of Stalin's purges, her family's Moscow flat was raided and her diaries, which covered the years 1932-37, were confiscated by the secret police. Their sentence was harsh; five years of hard labour in the Siberian gulag, followed by seven years of internal exile.

These two diaries of teen age girls show how children become seriously affected by wars usually the result of dictator’s intransigencies in noncompliance with international law.

In contrast when the Sinhala tyrant President Mahinda Rajapakse ordered his air force to bomb a civilian school of the minority ethnic Tamil community in the Tamil Homeland of North and East killing 61 innocent teenage young girls the world political and religious leaders remained mute with their conscience unturned. We do not know whether any of the 61 girls maintained a diary. If they did it would be in the same vein as that of Anne Frank or Nina.

Has the Western philosophers lost their senses too? It was the world genius Albert Einstein who once said “ The world is a dangerous place to live in : not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”.

‘Do nothing about it’ was what happened when the chauvinist president MR gave the deadly order on Monday the 14th August 2006. Four Sri-Lankan Kfir jet bombers dropped 16 bombs directly on the girl’s orphanage (children’s home) in Vallipunam, destroying several buildings and killing 61 school children (teenagers) and wounding 150 others.

Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, a team of Nordic country peace keeping/monitoring body had confirmed that the bombed site was ‘not military installation’ in response to the Sinhala government’s statement that the site bombed was a Tamil separatist training school. In addition UNICEF staff from a nearby office immediately visited the compound to assess the situation and to provide fuel and supplies for the hospital as well as counselling support for the injured students and the bereaved families and the executive director, Ann M. Veneman said , "These children are innocent victims of violence," "We call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law and ensure children and the places where they live, study and play are protected from harm".

The world appeared to have never heard the cries of these children. There would have been many Anne Franks and Ninas whose diary if at all they had a diary would tell the world their suffering under successive racist Sinhala regimes. Their live had been wrenched off when they were in their bud, extinguishing all their desires and dreams. Their life was cut off without them achieving what every females loves to have-children of their own. Procreation.

We could guess what their subjective fears would have been from the objective evidence of those children living under the Sri-Lankan bomb threats of the Sinhala regime. Professor of Psychiatry at the northern Jaffna University, Daya Somasundaram, who has conducted extensive studies on war distressed children in the TH of North and East, stresses that reportedly, nearly 80 percent of the 730,000 children in the school going ages in the two provinces, have had close brushes with the war. About 55 percent of them suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), while 25 percent have displayed serious complications." Symptoms of PTSD include fainting spells, loss of appetite, breathing difficulties, giddiness and sleep disturbances. Most children in this region suffer from one or a couple of them. Mr Somasundaram wrote in an article posted on 3-12-2003 in child rights in Asia in AHRC that one of his recent patients included an 11-year old boy from the northern district of Jaffna, who lost several of his family members after his house was shelled three years ago. "He used to have regular fainting spells, before which he screamed that a shell was coming his way.

61 anne Franks and 61 Ninas wilfully wiped out of the earth by a cruel racist Sinhala regime in the Tamil Homeland. Still for all Akasi of Japan where there is a passionate love for Anne Frank prevails among its citizens never cared to admonish the Sinhala government against this dastardly action. All Americans including the senators who wrote to Bush to bring in a political solution to the ethic political problem in Sri-lanka through negotiation failed to take immediate action for an impartial inquiry in order to bring peaceful rest to those killed.

While in the land of the Tamils in India across the Palk Staright another lady who was affected by the violent death of her father seventeen years ago when she was young was in search of clues to find out the reason for her father’s murder. Rajiv Gandhi, was blown to bits by a suicide bomber in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra his daughter paid a private visit to Vellore jail to meet one of the accused Nalini.

Like Anne Frank she was very much affected by the killing when she was a teenager. What is clear is that only a powerful emotion would have driven Priyanka to look into the face of a member of the assassination squad that killed her father. It would have required great inner strength to feel compassion for the guilty and to make up the mind to meet the assailant. Of course her emotional control broke down and she sobbed when she actually confronted the accused. This shows humanity in any person whether from the lap of luxury or from the gutters reacts to feelings. Human nature is same everywhere. Shorn of politics, Pryanka’s meeting with Nalini was a magnificent act in an age of mediocrity. But why didn’t the world ever react emotionally to the 61 children murder at Vallipunam in the Tamil Homeland of North and East?

For the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty that steered independent India through many a difficult time, this visit to a prison by a daughter seeking answers was a compelling moment of truth. Says a party insider: "She wants to end the legacy of blood and violence and by her kindness to Nalini she perhaps quietly wanted to send a message to the LTTE. This is also further reinforced by her when Ms Gandhi said “I don’t believe in anger or violence and I refuse to let it overpower me. Meeting Nalini (Sriharan) was my way of coming to terms with my father’s death,” Ms Gandhi said. The Times of India newspaper quoted Ms Gandhi telling Sriharan, “My father was a good person… Had you known about my father’s good nature, you would not have done this.”

Pryanka knew his father as a head of his family only as she was young to understand politics at the time of his death. Now she seems to understand politics. That is why she is on a mission to seek out the cause for his untimely death even though she could have found out these from the witness statement and evidence of Nalini in courts. She had displayed maturity when she passed a message to the LTTE. According to Nalini's lawyer S Doraisamy, Priyanka told Nalini, "What happened to my father should not happen to any other member of my family if the LTTE still has any anger or hatred against my family it should be buried”. In addition according to Sunetra Chaudhary of NDTV said on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 that In 2000, Rahul and Priyanka told their mother that they did not want Nalini's child to grow up as an orphan. These are magnanimous gestures from the offspring of India’s scions of democracy Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

If these new breed of young stalwarts of freedom, Pryanka and Rahul bring in salvation to many young Tamil children who under sinhala Tyrant in MR is always in a state of fear and anxiety like Anne Frank under Hitler it will do a world of good to humanity as a whole.

By: Dr C P Thiagarajah