Falls Church's Caroline Gotschall plays the character of Anne Frank in Laurel Mill Playhouse's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." (Photo Laurel Mill Playhouse)

Despite the thousands of books about the holocaust, some written by people who lived it, others by those who have studied the atrocities, few have been as popular or sold as well as one written by a young girl, Anne Frank, who never saw the end of that tragic period in the world’s history.

That history is presently on display at the Laural Mill Playhouse in Laurel, Maryland, as 13 year-old Falls Church City teenager Caroline Gotschall, plays the character of Anne Frank, in Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Like most grade-school age children, Caroline Gotschall knew the story of Anne Frank before being cast in the community theater production in Laurel, but she never gave a lot of thought to the terrible reality of Frank’s situation. But as she rehearsed the play, and developing her role, she gained a new connection to the oppressive truths of the Holocaust, and also how to convey that tragedy to an audience.

Gotschall told the News-Press that she has loved acting for as long as she can remember. Her mother can still recall her first performance ever, when she played ringmaster in a circus performance by her pre-school. She was one of only two with a speaking part, though she can’t remember the experience herself.

Since then, she has continued acting in school performances until this past November when she decided to start pursuing the art outside of school. Along with “The Diary of Anne Frank,” she has already been cast in a production of Hericles in Georgetown, which will go up after Anne Frank closes.

Still, the production of “Anne Frank” is particularly profound for Gotschall. She described the role as perhaps the best character out there for a 13 year-old girl.

With a bubbly, vivacious personality, Gotschall was easy to cast as Frank. Director and president of Laurel Mill Playhouse, Lenora Dernoga said when she saw Gotschall at the audition she knew from the first moment that she was the person for the part of Anne.

“She was so enthusiastic and so into it,” Dernoga said. “She has a lot of Anne Frank in her.”

Over the period of rehearsals, Dernoga has helped Gotschall understand the context of the play and gain empathy for Frank’s situation. Gotschall said that along with reading the text, she has watched several movies and visited the Holocaust museum to make herself feel more at home with what Anne was going through.

When Frank wrote her diary, during the two years when she and her family, along with four others, lived in the cramped confines of the hidden rooms above her father’s offices, she could hardly have known that her words would be read by actors looking to understand the girl who has touched millions through her writing.

What Gotschall has realized from Anne's words is how much they have in common. For her, the biggest part of developing the character was already there, a part of her personality, which made the content of the play really hit home with the young actress. She said that because of her similarity to Anne Frank she realized the atrocities of the holocaust didn’t happen to faceless figures, but rather to real people. “You get attached to these people and what happened to them,” she said.

The adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” that Dernoga chose, a relatively new version composed by Kesselman in 1997, emphasizes this humanity, using more of Frank’s journal entries that weren’t included in the first version.

The idea is to show more of Anne’s personality as she dealt not only with the German occupation but also with her own development into a woman. Throughout the play she talks about her growing feelings for Peter Van Daan, feelings that eventually lead to a deep friendship between the two.

Dernoga, herself Jewish, whose own mother escaped from Germany in 1939, also said the new adaptation focuses more on Judaism, an integral part of Frank’s person, but a part that was sometimes overlooked in the original version.

Still, Dernoga doesn’t want the increased focus on Frank’s character and her personal growth to overshadow, too much the fact that the families were living in constant danger of discovery.

To keep the presence of the outside world ever present, she used a very tight set, dramatic lighting and music, that wouldn’t allow the audience to forget the fact that the Holocaust is happening as the characters attempt to go about their day-to-day lives.

A testament to their success in capturing the real tragedy of the play, Gotschall’s mother, Cathy, said that watching the play was a profound, though disturbing experience.

“When it really is your child up there, it brings home the suffering in a very real way,” she said.