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Her diary has been part of the Holocaust narrative for years -- most commonly as classroom reading -- but on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, America will witness Anne Frank's maturation while hiding from the Nazis in a Public Broadcasting Service "Masterpiece" program.

"The Diary of Anne Frank," the latest adaptation of the memoir, will air April 11 from 9 to 11 p.m. on PBS. The film depicts Anne, who died in March 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, as an inquisitive teenager who quarrels with her parents and falls in love, entertaining but more often tormenting her housemates for two years in a secret annex behind her father's business in Amsterdam.

Giving Anne tone and character that the book can only go so far in providing, the film weaves her narration with scenes from the annex, where Anne's family lived along with the van Daan family and dentist Albert Dussel starting in June 1942. Anne, whose writing career was launched when she received a diary as her 13th birthday gift, asks "Why didn't you tell me?" when her family moves into hiding, the first of numerous times in the film she laments how her maturity was underestimated.

Anne is initially upbeat about her family's plight, joking that they were wearing so many clothes that "we look as if we are going to spend the night in a fridge." Still, she understands the gravity of the situation, explaining as the door closes to the annex that "when the door closes, the reality is that we'll have to stay here until the war closes."

Visibly more composed than the rest of her family, Anne says the annex is probably the most comfortable hiding place in all of Holland, and chatters away with the shy 15-year-old Peter van Daan while giving him a tour of the living quarters.

Nevertheless, Anne shows her age on a number of occasions, complaining how Peter got to bring his cat to the annex and she didn't, how her housemates spent too much time in the bathroom, and how she must share a room with Dussel, who snores loudly and exercises each morning. Anne's mother Edith, who often puts Anne in her place, tells her there is a war going on and there are more important things than cats. Anne says she feels herself drifting from her mother each day because they "differ on everything."

When Dussel likens Anne to one of his child patients at the dentist's office, Anne responds "I'm not a child, actually. I'm 13." She goes on to quarrel with Dussel over the amount of time they get to use the one desk in their room, with Dussel demanding double desk time for his important work compared with Anne's "scribbling" in her diary. When Anne mimics Petronella van Daan, Petronella says "The trouble is, you know far too much about things you're not supposed to."

Indeed, knowledge is power for Anne throughout the film. Upon the van Daan's arrival in the annex, she immediately asks them "What's happening [in the war], please tell us!" She listens to the radio for news updates, noting at one point that "Gandhi, the Indian champion, is on one of his umpteenth hunger strikes." When Dussel tells Anne of his plans to move to South America with his fiancée after the war, Anne replies with her usual "Why didn't you tell me?" When Dussel finally agrees to grant Anne equal desk time -- with some convincing from Anne's father Otto -- Anne rolls her eyes at how Dussel sulked for two days over the decision, saying it was "So childish of him, don't you think?"

A scene of Anne's 14th birthday party, where she is seemingly mesmerized by chocolate she received as a gift, quickly shifts back to Dussel's snoring for a shot of reality. In another fight with Petronella, Anne says "Oh, if I could only dump her in a bucket of water and put her in the cold shed."

Anne describes how it feels to go through her period, and laments how her parents or older sister Margot never speak with her about sex. She develops a romantic relationship with Peter, who she meets every day in the attic. Her mother warns her not to be hurtful to Peter (despite the fact that Peter is the older one), and her father cautions that in hiding, when you spend all your time with the same people every day, things can "get out of hand." Anne asks Margot if she is OK with her relationship with Peter, being that Margot previously was interested in Peter, and Margot gives Anne a dose of her own medicine by saying "I had just wished you'd told me."

Despite her tender age, Anne thinks of her relationship with Peter within a big-picture context. "Is he the right one? I don't know," she says.

When Anne tells Margot "I wish I could get away from our parents," Margot shuts the door and leaves without responding. Tension over Anne's relationship with Peter boils over when Anne writes a letter to her father saying "I don't need you or my mother anymore... You don't understand how I grow up... I'm not you're little girl anymore so please leave me alone."

Anne's father tells her the letter was the most painful message her ever received, and she says, "I can't help it, I have to write what I feel." All the while, writing proves to be Anne's safe haven while in hiding. She says that when she writes, all her sadness disappears, and that she looks upon her life in the annex as an adventure and a way of adding amusing things to her diary. Anne's writing also leads her to the conclusion that she has no more time for Peter. "I don't want to have lived in vain like most people," she says.

Anne also concludes that "Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old" because in the Holocaust generation, young people are hard-pressed to hold onto their ideals when the world around them is being destroyed. She says she still feels, however, that most people are good at heart. Right after that diary entry, the German police enter the annex, and arrest everyone in the final scene of the film. As each member of the Frank and van Daan families (as well as Dussel) walk down the stairs, the name of the concentration camps they died at are revealed on screen, with Otto being the only survivor (in Auschwitz).

The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) is a sponsor for the PBS program.

"We are honored to participate in this opportunity to bring the compelling -- and important -- story of Anne Frank to young people across the country," the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County said in a statement. "Data suggests that many young people are unaware of details about Anne Frank's era."

For more information on the film, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/annefrank/index.html.