Anne rewrote her personal diary for publication
The red-and-white-checkered notebook, an autograph album that Anne had gotten for her 13th birthday, was the first thing she thought to use as a journal. I hope I will be able to trust everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anybody, and I hope you will be a tremendous source of comfort and support, she wrote in her very first entry on June 12, 1942.
From the start, Anne wrote her journal with the intention of keeping it private and hoped no one else would see it. On March 28, 1944, as Anne was listening to the radio, Dutch Cabinet Minister Gerrit Bolkestein gave a speech that caused this to alter. To quote Bolkestein: "History cannot be written based on official decisions and documents alone. If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we need are ordinary documents -- a diary, letters from a worker in Germany, a collection of sermons given by a person or priest. Not until we succeed in bringing together vast quantities of this simple, everyday material will the picture of our struggle for freedom be painted in its full depth and glory."
After the war, Anne was motivated to get her diary published and she started rewriting it all on loose sheets of paper. She also clarified certain instances, uniformly addressed Kitty in every entry, and made a list of pseudonyms while shortening some and prolonging others. Despite coming so close to finishing this enormous effort, Anne sadly ran out of time before being taken into custody on August 4, 1944. On March 29, 1944, Anne revised her final item in the journal.
