Back house

Diary in letters June 12, 1942 – August 1, 1944

After twenty-five years, a completely new translation of Anne Frank' s diary is being published. For the first time in Czech with the title that the author herself intended to give to her work.

Translated from the Dutch original by Magda de Bruin Hüblová. Editor Mirjam Pressler (version D). Revised edition of Otto H. Frank (version C).

Anne Frank kept a diary in letters from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. She wrote it only for herself until the moment in the spring of 1944 when she heard a speech by the Dutch Minister of Education in exile on London' s Radio Oranje. He called for people to collect and publish all testimonies about the suffering of the Dutch people during the German occupation after the end of the war. He cited diaries, among other things, as an example. Impressed by this speech, Anne Frank decided to publish a book after the war. The basis for it was to be her diary.

Anne wrote about this on March 29, 1944: Dear Kitty, last night on Radio Oranje, Minister Bolkestein spoke about the fact that after the war a collection of diaries and letters from this war will be organized. Of course, everyone immediately jumped on my diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I published the novel The Back House. Just from the title, people would have the impression that it' s a detective story.

From May 1944, she began to revise and rewrite the diary, making corrections, omitting passages that she did not consider interesting enough, and adding others from memory. At the same time, she continued to write the original diary (researchers later called it version A – as opposed to the revised diary, which is referred to as version B). Anne Frank' s last entry is from August 1, 1944. On August 4, all eight inhabitants of the hiding place were arrested by the so-called green police. Hiding assistants Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl took Anna' s notes to safety on the day of her arrest. Miep Gies put them in a drawer of her desk, and only when it was confirmed, that Anne did not survive her imprisonment in a concentration camp, she handed them over, without reading them, To Anne' s father, Otto Frank. After careful consideration, Otto Frank decided to fulfill his deceased daughter' s wishes and publish the notes in a book. To this end, he compiled an abridged third version (C) from both of Anna' s versions, the original (version A) and the hand-revised version (version B). The authorized version, currently published worldwide, was prepared by German writer and translator Mirjam Pressler on behalf of the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel. She took Frank' s selection of entries from version C and supplemented it with passages from diary versions A and B.

The new, third translation of the diary into Czech was made by Magda de Bruin Hüblová. It returns to the title that Anne wanted for her intended book and under which the diary is published in Dutch.

Magda de Bruin Hüblová wrote about her concept of translation: “There are two ways to approach Anne Frank’s diary when translating: as a document, which requires the most accurate translation possible, or as a literary work, which allows for a certain smoothing of the text with young readers in mind. Since the new translation is to become part of a comprehensive edition of Anne Frank' s work, in which the authentic, ' uncombed' versions A and B will be published in Czech for the first time, I have opted for the first option. My translation thus preserves the original' s peculiarities more than previous Czech translations.