Anne Frank – A Symbol Of Courage
Courage and bravery, in pop culture, is the most overused and misunderstood virtues that describe anything from a superhero to a villian. To Aristotle there is not a lot of people who have the profound virtue of the true form of courage. Aristotle says in his Nicomachean Ethics that virtue is a mean between two extremes, thus it is a mean between two opposite vices. He states that virtue is in respect, “to its being and the definition that states what it is, virtue is a mean”. However he also states that virtue is “in respect to what is beast and the doing of something well, it is an extreme,” thus stating that one can either have a virtue or simply does not as it can be destroyed through passion and action. Aristotle’s virtue of courage has a sense of life threatening situations on more than just the battlefield as it contains an adequate amount of fear and confidence. Consequently, courage to Aristotle deals with fear. This fear has to be just in the right circumstance, amount, and of itself, if not it can lead to the excess and deficiency of courage. Courage is a mean between the deficiency of cowardice and an excess of rashness.
Anne Frank has become a symbol of courage, not only in the current century but to Aristotle’s beliefs also. Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Unemployment was high and poverty was severe in Germany as Adolf Hitler took reign and gained more supporters. Hitler despised the Jewish people and blamed them for all that was wrong in Germany. As he took advantage of the Jews, Anne’s parents, Otto and Edith Frank, decided to move to Amsterdam. On 1 September 1939, Anne was 10 years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and the Second World War began. Slowly but surely, the Nazis introduced more and more laws and regulations that made the lives of Jews more difficult. Jews could no longer visit parks, cinemas, or non-Jewish shops, including Anne, herself. When Anne’s sister received a call-up to report for a so-called ‘labour camp’ in Nazi Germany on July 5, 1942, her parents were suspicious and decided to go into hiding in the Secret Annex to escape persecution. Fearing her life, on August 4, 1944, police officers discovered them hiding in Annex and threw them in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. In November 1944, Anne was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were the conditions were worse. There was almost no food, it was frigid, wet and there were contagious diseases to which Anne contracted typhus. In February 1945 Anne died. Otto, her father, was the only family member that survived the Holocaust. He published Anne’s diary in June of 1947 where he hoped that readers would become aware of the dangers of discrimination, racism, and hatred of Jews.
Anne knew of the situation her family was in, she was not naive to the idea, as she started a diary to help her cope with what she was going through as she had a constant struggle of the injustice against the Jewish people. In her diary she writes, “that night I really thought I was going to die. I waited for the police and I was ready for death, like a soldier on a battlefield. I’d gladly have given my life for my country,” this is when the police knocks on the door of the Secret Annex, and Anne was for the first time was aware of her mortality and was afraid of death as Aristotle believes is a sense of courage. Aristotle believes that in courage is a fear of sudden death. Anne Frank was scared to die, as the police were there and forced the Annex door open Anne writes, “what will we do if we’re ever . . . no, I mustn’t write that down. But the question won’t let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I’ve ever felt is looming before me in all its horror”. Aristotle says that courage but be displayed with a conscious struggle of a noble cause. Anne was being persecuted against because she was a Jew, she had to go into hiding because of Adolf Hitler’s hatred of the Jews, she had to be placed in a concentration camp where she was tortured and eventually killed because of the conditions by being a Jew. So yes during the Holocaust, she was scared to die, scared to be in a world of war. However, she displays the virtue of courage through all that has happened during the Holocaust. She writes “people can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn’t stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think,” as she was aware of what they were doing to her people but yet persisted as she wrote the journal that now millions of people read each year to recall the horrors of the Holocaust.
Anne realizes that her fate would have been if she went in hiding but her suffering is eased by hope as she writes that people are still good at heart. This is why she displays a virtue of courage as Aristotle defines it as fear in the right circumstance, amount, and of itself. She went throught the Holocaust concious of the unjustice she has been in and a fear that her life may be taken away by the Nazis. This did not only depict the illuminate the moral dimensions of World War II but also speak to the moral dilemmas of our own age.
Works Cited
- Aristotle. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, University of Chicago Press, 2011.
- Frank, Anne, et al. The Diary of a Young Girl. Pocket Books, 1953.
