Anne Frank's Story Revisited in Zagreb

Visitors to the Tresnja children's theatre in Zagreb will have an opportunity on Friday to see the keenly awaited premiere of "Anne Frank", a play based on the real story of a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Holland who kept a secret diary.

Frank wrote the diary between June 1942 and August 1944 while her family was hiding in an attic in Amsterdam.

The family was betrayed and caught by the Nazis and transferred to Auschwitz and later to the concentration camp at Bergen Belsen, where she died in March 1945, at the age of only 15.

Her father had her diary published in 1947 and it soon became a bestseller, with more than 30 million copies in a number of languages. It is widely seen as one of the most important eye-witness accounts to emerge from the Holocaust as well as a fine literary work in its own right.

The date of the premiere was chosen to mark the 70th anniversary of her death. It is the first time the play has been put on in Zagreb since 1957.

The director is the theatre and movie director Jakov Sedlar, who has tackled the issue of the Holocaust in some of his movies, and is known for his 1990s films "Four Rows" and "Gospa" ["Mother of God"], which some consider examples of historical revisionism.

Sedlar said the play focuses on a story of a childhood destroyed by the chaos of war, but also takes a forward-looking approach.

"Although the play refers to a specific situation and to a person who accidentally became a symbol of the Second World War, it is actually a 'hommage' to all young people who have suffered and died... in human history," he stated.

Sedlar stressed that neither the diary nor the play focus solely on the Holocaust and war, but also on a teenage girl's "first...