The Diary of Anne Frank: A Play

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Act I

Reading Check

1. In what building is the Secret Annex located?

2. Anne is delighted to learn that Peter has brought what?

3. What does Peter do to his clothes shortly after arriving that Anne mimics?

4. What, according to Peter, did Anne’s teacher call her and why?

5. Why is Mr. van Daan so irritable until Miep arrives?

6. What important question do Miep and Mr. Kraler show up to ask everyone?

7. What upsetting outside news does Anne learn from Mr. Dussel?

8. What causes Anne to start screaming uncontrollably?

9. What gift does Anne give Peter for Hannukah?

10. What incident ruins their Hannukah celebration?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How would you describe Anne’s attitude about going into hiding at the beginning of the play?

2. What are the rules Anne and the others living in the Annex need to follow to avoid anyone noticing that they’re there?

3. What does Peter do during their Hannukah celebration that suggests he’s finally loosening up?

4. How does Anne describe the way she visualizes the people in the Annex at the end of the act?

Paired Resource

“Jewish Badge: During the Nazi Era”

• This article explains how the Jewish star badge functioned socially and legally in Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries.
• How does this history inform what Peter does and says regarding the Jewish star badge, and what does it mean to take it off his clothes? Consider the theme The World Outside the Annex and how Peter’s actions connect to their new relationship with the world.

“Anne Frank Takes Us Behind the Movable Bookcase”

• In this short video, viewers can “visit” the Secret Annex. A narrator reads the thorough description of the space and layout that Anne wrote in her diary to accompany a virtual walkthrough tour showing each room in the roughly 815-square-foot Annex.
• How does this visual of the Secret Annex inform the characters’ behavior toward each other? How would you recreate this sense of being too close onstage? Connections to the themes Waiting and the Passage of Time and The World Outside the Annex might be useful in understanding the different dimensions of claustrophobia.

Act II

Reading Check

1. What “sweet secret” does Anne talk to her diary about at the beginning of Act II?

2. Miep brings a cake to celebrate which holiday?

3. Why is Mrs. van Daan’s fur coat so precious to her?

4. When Anne and Peter open up to each other, what commonality do they discover?

5. How, according to Anne, does she manage to make herself eat when the food is awful?

6. Why is Anne excited when she hears the Dutch Minister of Education on the Radio?

7. What piece of the outside world is Anne happy to discover she can see from the attic with Peter?

8. When Miep shows up weeping in the middle of the night, what news does she bring?

9. What does Margot want to do with her life after the war?

10. Of the eight people in the Annex, who survives the war?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How do the adults in the Annex act toward each other over the cake Miep brings?

2. When Mrs. Frank follows Miep to the stairs to talk in private, what does she confide?

3. What punishment does Mrs. Frank want to inflict on Mr. van Daan for stealing food?

4. What is the image that haunts Anne’s dreams and nightmares?

Paired Resource

“Courage+Valor, Stories That Inspire: Miep Gies”

• In 1994 this video, Miep Gies accepts the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor. After an introduction by actor Whoopi Goldberg, Gies speaks about bravery and why she doesn’t want to be called a hero.
• What do Miep Gies and the play teach us about what it means to be a hero? What does it mean to choose not to be a hero during moments of historical injustice? Consider connecting this discussion to the theme of Good and Evil in Human Nature.

“How Anne Frank's Private Diary Became an International Sensation”

• This article from History.com explains how Anne’s diary went from scattered notebooks and pages on the floor of the Annex to the most well-known document to emerge from the Holocaust.
• How would you describe the character of Anne in the play? How does knowing Anne’s intentions for the diary and the way the diary was edited inform the way we think about her portrayal? How would you use this if you were an actor playing Anne?

Recommended Next Reads

Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo by Zlata Filipovic

• Zlata Filipovic, a young Bosnian girl in Sarajevo, started keeping her diary in 1991 at age 11. For two years, she documented her perspective while the brutal Bosnian War closed in on her home city and upended her previously normal childhood. As a part of a population targeted for genocide, Zlata lived in terror and hiding during the atrocities of the grueling Siege of Sarajevo. Her story has often been paralleled to Anne Frank’s, although Zlata survived the war and was able to publish her diary herself.
• Shared topics include violent dehumanization and genocide from the perspective of a child, racial or ethnic oppression, hiding, coming of age at wartime, writing as self-exploration, and fighting for survival.

·        Shared themes include Waiting and the Passage of Time and Good and Evil in Human Nature. 

• Zlata’s Diary on SuperSummary

Night by Elie Wiesel

• Elie Wiesel was a 15-year-old Jewish Hungarian boy when the Nazis invaded his country. In this memoir, he describes his experiences of being rounded up with his parents and sisters and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Wiesel details the unspeakably inhuman atrocities he endures and witnesses and the desperation of sick and starving captives. When the camps were liberated, Wiesel was the only member of his family to survive. Wiesel went on to become a major activist, write 57 books, and win the most prestigious awards in the world, including the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. Night is often paired with The Diary of Anne Frank, as it provides the brutal context of the Holocaust and gives insight into what Anne and the others endured after the diary ended.
• Shared topics include violent dehumanization and genocide from the perspective of a child, ethnic oppression, coming of age at wartime, writing as self-exploration, and fighting for survival.
• Shared themes include Waiting and the Passage of Time and Good and Evil in Human Nature. 
• Night on SuperSummary