A River's water of thoughts

It is...indescribable to look at her so young and carefree and know how her life ends up. And incredible young woman who lived through extraordinary times and brought the horrors of World War II, Nazi's and Concentration Camps into our homes and lives.



Film footage of Anne Frank posted on YouTube (October 02, 2009 - The Guardian - Adam Gabbatt)

Anne Frank is filmed seen leaning over her balcony in 1941 to get a good look of the bride-to-be next door

The only existing film images of Anne Frank have been loaded on to YouTube by Amsterdam museum the Anne Frank House.

The footage, from 1941, is the only time Anne has been captured on film. The 20-second footage uploaded to the museum's recently launched Anne Frank Channel shows Anne's neighbour on her wedding day. A 13-year-old Anne is seen nine seconds into the video, leaning out of a second-floor window to get a better look at the bride and groom. At the time of the wedding the bride-to-be lived at No 37 Merwedeplein, next door to the Franks at No 39.

The scene was filmed on 22 July 1941, just under a year before the Frank family went into hiding above the family business. The family were discovered in August 1944 and Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp in March 1945.

A shorter, five-second version of the video was given to Otto Frank, Anne's father, by the married couple in the 1950s. After Anne's published diary became widely known in the 1950s the couple recognised her in the film and contacted Otto.

Annemarie Bekker, from the Anne Frank House, said using YouTube was a way to introduce the life of Anne Frank to people who may never have heard of her diaries.

"The footage is very moving and very unique because these are the only moving images of Anne Frank," Bekker said.

"The museum has had the footage for some time, but thought YouTube would be a good platform to show the film and the other films about her life. It's another way to bring the life of Anne Frank to the attention of younger people, and all people worldwide."

The husband and wife, who are still alive and living in the Netherlands, were contacted by the Anne Frank House in the 1990s and provided the longer video.

The video channel also includes excerpts from interviews with Otto Frank and Miep Gies, who helped to hide the Franks from the Nazis.

The film has already attracted more than 275,000 views, with scores of comments. One read: "Gave me chills to see her in the video." Another user wrote: "Who knows what she could have become."

It's now up to 594,172 views.

It's been ten years to the day since Columbine.
And so far 80 more school shootings have taken place since that incident.

It is not well known but there is a video the boys made explaining why they did what they did. Besides the police and the families no one else has seen it. There are advocates who say the video should be shown to teachers and school personel because it can help prevent another incident like this. So far, nothing has been done.

The Myths Surrounding Columbine and What We Got Wrong

Update: I found this on The Guardian. Wow...we really didn't know anything about the attack did we?

Much of what we reported, though, was simply wrong, as attested by tens of thousands of official documents and other evidence that has at last seen the light of day after years of suppression by the local authorities. As the Colorado-based journalist Dave Cullen tells in his gripping and authoritative new book Columbine, Harris and Klebold had plenty of friends, did pretty well in school, were not members of the Trenchcoat Mafia, did not listen to Manson, were not bullied, harboured no specific grudges against any one group, and did not "snap" because of some last-straw traumatic event. All those stories were the product of hysteria, ignorance and flailing guesswork in the first few hours and days.

The truth was more sinister. Their ambition, harboured for about a year and a half and chronicled meticulously on Harris's website and in the boys' private journals, recovered after their deaths, was to blow up the entire school. Not to get at anyone in particular, but because they hated the world and intended to have fun annihilating as much of it as they could.