In spite of everything, would she still believe?

If she had not been mur­dered by the Nazis in ear­ly March 1945, Anne Frank would turn 80 years old on 12 June 2009.

Anne Frank in an age progression image at 80 years old

Anne Frank in an age pro­gres­sion image at 80 years old

What would you say to Anne Frank if you were to meet her on the street? …that she trans­formed your life? She made you a bet­ter, more hope­ful person?

In 1944 she wrote these, seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry sentences:

I still believe, in spite of every­thing, that peo­ple are tru­ly good at heart

Then 2 sen­tences later:

I see the world being slow­ly trans­formed into a wilder­ness, I hear the approach­ing thun­der that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suf­fer­ing of mil­lions…. In the mean­time, I must hold on to my ideals. Per­haps the day will come when I’ll be able to real­ize them.

Do you think that what she expe­ri­enced in the last few months of her life might have changed her out­look? Or per­haps might the ensu­ing 64 years have caused her to reeval­u­ate her “belief”? We can­not know.

Is Anne Frank truly dead?

When­ev­er we die, we are remem­bered as nev­er being, or becom­ing, any old­er that we were at our death. We cease to grow and change. And so it is with Anne Frank. She remains the young pre­co­cious teenager.

And yet, dur­ing the past 64 years much has hap­pened that many con­sid­er both encour­ag­ing and discouraging.

She has become a metaphor­ic touch­stone for who our bet­ter selves should be.

In her 1997 arti­cle in The New York­er, “Who Owns Anne FrankCyn­thia Ozick took a close look at what had almost become an Anne Frank “indus­try” and attempts to “update” her mes­sage and under­stand it in our con­tem­po­rary con­texts. While stat­ing at the out­set that Anne Frank would by now be a world-class writer because:

At thir­teen, she felt her pow­er; at fif­teen, she was in com­mand of it.

Ozick shies away from imag­in­ing what she would be like:

Yet any pro­jec­tion of Anne Frank as a con­tem­po­rary fig­ure is an unholy spec­u­la­tion; it tam­pers with his­to­ry, with real­i­ty, with dead­ly truth.

After all…

…the diary in itself… can­not count as Anne Frank’s sto­ry. …the end is missing.

[It] has been bowd­ler­ized dis­tort­ed, trans­mut­ed, tra­duced, reduced; it has been infan­tilized, Amer­i­can­ized, homog­e­nized, sen­ti­men­tal­ized; fal­si­fied, kitschi­fied, and, in fact, bla­tant­ly and arro­gant­ly denied.

Anne Frank’s sto­ry, truth­ful­ly told, is unre­deemed and unredeemable.

And at the same time Ozick is con­cerned because of some­thing Alvin Rosen­feld has report­ed in his essay “Pop­u­lar­iza­tion and Mem­o­ry” (not avail­able online), (she shares):

Anne Frank has become a ready-at-hand for­mu­la for easy forgiveness.

That she…

…remains in all coun­tries a revered and com­fort­ing [empha­sis mine] fig­ure in the con­tem­po­rary mind.

This seems to be a descrip­tion of the grand­moth­er we see in the pho­to­graph above.

Nobody, or, everybody owns Anne Frank

Anne Frank has entered the realm of myth­ic cul­ture hero as have so many oth­er peo­ple. The actu­al per­son lives on in the imag­i­na­tions of all those who have encoun­tered a tiny por­tion of her. These peo­ple (“We”) have, to add anoth­er metaphor, caught the ball and we’re run­ning with it toward what­ev­er goal posts we imag­ine are before us.

This process is not new. It began as soon as Anne’s (yes, she and I are on a first-name basis) diary was pub­lished in mod­i­fied form by her father. Then picked up by Mey­er Levin and trans­formed by Lil­lian Hell­man (for Broad­way then Hol­ly­wood), the “Dairy of a Young Girl” has been read by near­ly every young lit­er­ate teenag­er since the mid 1950s. Her image is near­ly rec­og­nized even today.

Could Anne Frank grow older?

Anoth­er per­son who tried to intro­duce us to a dif­fer­ent (an “old­er”) Anne Frank is Philip Roth in his 1979 nov­el The Ghost Writer. For some, unknown rea­son (per­haps because Roth’s con­ceit is too out­landish for her?) Ozick does not men­tion Roth in her arti­cle. In the nov­el, Roth’s lit­er­ary stand-in Nathan Zuck­er­man falls in love with and wants to mar­ry a woman who he believes is Anne Frank. An Anne Frank who has mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived the Shoa. Var­i­ous rea­sons have been offered as to why “Roth” would want to mar­ry Anne Frank, among them an attempt to assuage his (pre­sumed) Jew­ish guilt for hav­ing writ­ten nov­els that describe Amer­i­can Jew­ish life in high­ly crit­i­cal images. Roth’s roman­tic con­cerns are not the issue here. Rather, the idea that he could “appro­pri­ate” Anne Frank at all. But appro­pri­at­ing real sit­u­a­tions and peo­ple is what cre­ative writ­ers (includ­ing Cyn­thia Ozick, though she may fic­tion­al­ize names) do.

So, is Anne Frank alive?

You might think that is a sil­ly ques­tion, and yet Bar­bro Karlen believes she is. In fact Bar­bro believes she is Anne Frank!

In her fic­tion­al­ized account of her “self-dis­cov­ery” as Anne Frank And the Wolves Howled , Frag­ments of Two Life­times, Ms Karlen, born to non-Jew­ish par­ents in 1954 in Goeten­borg, Swe­den, believes that she is Anne Frank rein­car­nate. That would make the woman in the pho­to­graph at the top 24 years too old.

The fact that Anne Frank has had an impact on the world, espe­cial­ly young Euro­pean non-Jew­ish women, caus­ing some of them to decide to become (“reborn”) as Jews, is not unknown. And, indeed, Rab­bi Yonas­san Ger­shom (who seems to have writ­ten his own Wikipedia entry) has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the ques­tion of Rein­car­na­tion and the Holo­caust. How­ev­er Ms. Karlen has tak­en this to a new level.

Otto Frank, Anne’s father tried to get Amer­i­can visas for his fam­i­ly… had he suc­ceed­ed she might now be liv­ing on Long Island. His efforts were thwart­ed, it seems because of under­ly­ing anti-Semi­tism in Amer­i­can soci­ety, by bureau­crat­ic iner­tia, and a wartime fear of Ger­man-born immi­grants. In an ex-post-fac­to attempt to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion, Christo­pher Bod­kin of Sayville, LI attempt­ed to acquire for Anne posthu­mous citizenship.

Will you meet Anne on the street?

Indeed, Anne is on the streets of New York City, though not as you might expect or appreciate.

Anne Frank on the Upper West Side of Manhattan

Anne Frank on the Upper West Side of Manhattan

Who “owns” Anne Frank? Indeed! And, why is she wear­ing a kef­fiyeh? It appears as if the per­son or group that post­ed that stick­er (there must be more!) believes that Anne Frank would iden­ti­fy with the Pales­tini­ans and oppose Israel (or at least cer­tain Israeli policies).

On April 17, 2009, The New York Times wrote a sto­ry about the chest­nut tree that gave Anne Frank solace. The ail­ing tree has pro­duced ten saplings that will be plant­ed around the world, at least one of them in New York City.

Ten saplings that orig­i­nat­ed from that state­ly but seri­ous­ly ail­ing tree are to be brought here lat­er this year for dis­tri­b­u­tion by the cen­ter [The Anne Frank Cen­ter, USA], a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion with an office on the fifth floor of 38 Cros­by Street.

38 Cros­by Street?! That is around the cor­ner from where my sis­ter lived for near­ly 30 years. Who knew? Why does this seem to be a secret? I decid­ed I need­ed to vis­it. Attempt­ing to take my pho­to at the entrance to the build­ing and and not hav­ing as much suc­cess as I want­ed, I asked a young man and woman in their thir­ties stand­ing near­by smok­ing cig­a­rettes (!) if they would help. They won­dered why I want­ed the pho­to and I told them that it was the entrance to the Anne Frank Cen­ter. They each had read the diary and were glad to know that the Cen­ter was there. The build­ing has no iden­ti­fy­ing mark­ers oth­er than the lit­tle label (fourth from the top beneath the secu­ri­ty cam­era) that reads “Anne Frank Center”.

visiting the Anne Frank Center USA in SoHo

vis­it­ing the Anne Frank Cen­ter USA in SoHo

It is as though zom­bie Annes walk the streets and true Anne is still in hiding!

Stay Vocal

Anne Frank appears on at least two dif­fer­ent lapel but­tons. One, which I was not able to acquire dis­play’s the offi­cial line.

Anne Frank… still believes

Anne Frank… still believes

The oth­er, which I have been wear­ing for the few weeks lead­ing up to this date and appears in the pho­to of me above, push­es the mean­ing of Anne Frank in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. It seems that the group Stay Vocal believes that if we each speak out about abus­es we encounter, soci­etal crises such as those that lead to Anne Frank’s mur­der would not occur.

Anne Frank Stay Vocal

Anne Frank Stay Vocal

Date: 2008?
Size: 2.54
Pin Form: straight clasp
Print Method: cel­lu­loid
Text STAY VOCAL
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