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Anne Frank

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dont zhao oppression under German occupation. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Anne decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing sections and rewriting others, with the view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf sheets of paper. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers. The van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell. Otto Frank used her original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B", to produce the first version for publication. He removed certain passages, most notably those which referred to his wife in unflattering terms, and sections that discussed Anne's growing sexuality. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.

He gave the diary to the historian Anne Romein, who tried unsuccessfully to have it published. She then gave it to her husband Jan Romein, who wrote an article about it, titled "Kinderstem" ("A Child's Voice"), published in the newspaper Het Parool on April 3, 1946. He wrote that the diary "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together" . His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in 1947, followed by a second run in 1950. The first American edition was published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. A play based upon the diary, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered in New York City on October 5 1955, and later won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the 1959 movie The Diary of Anne Frank, which was a critical and commercial success. Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Anne Frank to new generations of readers.

In 1986, a critical edition of the diary was published . It compared her original entries with her father's edited versions, and included discussion relating its authentication, and historical information relating to the family.

In 1988, Cornelis Suijk—a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation—announced that he was in the possession of five pages that had been removed by Otto Frank from the diary prior to publication; Suijk claimed that Otto Frank gave these pages to him shortly before his death in 1980. The missing diary entries contain critical remarks by Anne Frank about her parents' strained marriage, and show Anne's lack of affection for her mother . Some controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights over the five pages and intended to sell them to raise money for his U.S. Foundation. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the formal owner of the manuscript, demanded the pages to be handed over. In 2000 the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate US$300,000 to Suijk's Foundation, and the pages were returned in 2001 . Since then, they have been included in new editions of the diary.

Praise for Anne Frank and the Diary

In her introduction to the diary's first American edition, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read". The Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg later said: "one voice speaks for six million—the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl." As Anne Frank's stature as both a writer and humanist has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her acceptance speech for an Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read from Anne Frank's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young," which Clinton related to contemporary events in Sarajevo, Somalia and Rwanda . After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it." He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle against apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies with the comment "because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail."

Reconstruction of the bookcase that covered the entrance to the hiding place, in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

In her closing message in Melissa Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust", writing: "Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."

The diary has also been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing style, the dramatist Meyer Levin – who worked with Otto Frank on a dramatisation of the diary shortly after its publication – praised it for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel" , while the poet John Berryman wrote that it was a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of "the mysterious, fundamental process of a child becoming an adult as it is actually happening" . Her biographer Melissa Müller said that she wrote "in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty". Her writing is largely a study of characters, and she examines every person in her circle with a shrewd, uncompromising eye. She is occasionally cruel and often biased, particularly in her depictions of Fritz Pfeffer and of her own mother, and Müller explains that she channelled the "normal mood swings of adolescence" into her writing. Her examination of herself and her surroundings is sustained over a lengthy period of time in an introspective, analytical and highly self critical manner, and in moments of frustration she relates the battle being fought within herself between the "good Anne" she wants to be, and the "bad Anne" she believes herself to be. Otto Frank recalled his publisher explaining why he thought the diary has been so widely read, with the comment "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally".

Challenges by Holocaust deniers and legal action

Efforts have been made to discredit the diary since its publication, and since the mid 1970s Holocaust denier David Irving has been consistent in his assertion that the diary is not genuine . Continued public statements made by such Holocaust deniers prompted Teresien da Silva to comment on behalf of Anne Frank House in 1999, "for many right-wing extremists (Anne) proves to be an obstacle. Her personal testimony of the persecution of the Jews and her death in a concentration camp are blocking the way to a rehabilitation of national socialism".

Since the 1950s Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in a few European countries, and the law has been used to prevent a rise in neo-Nazi activity. In 1959 Otto Frank took legal action in Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and former Hitler Youth member who published a school paper that described the diary as a forgery. The court examined the diary, and in 1960 found it to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case any further.

In 1958, Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by a group of protesters at a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna who asserted that Anne Frank had never existed, and who told Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. He began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer readily admitted his role, and identifed Anne Frank from a photograph as one of the people arrested. He provided a full account of events and recalled emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.

In 1976 Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating the diary was a forgery. The judge ruled that if he published further statements he would be subjected to a 500,000 Deutschmark fine and a six months' jail sentence. Two cases were dismissed by German courts in 1978 and 1979 on the grounds of freedom of speech, as the complaint was not filed by an "injured party". The court ruled in each case that if a further complaint was made by an injured party, such as Otto Frank, a charge of slander could follow.

The controversy reached its peak in 1980 with the arrest and trial of two neo-Nazis, Ernst Römer and Edgar Geiss, who were tried and found guilty of producing and distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery, following a complaint by Otto Frank. During their appeal, a team of historians examined the documents in consultation with Otto Frank, and determined them to be genuine.

With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, were willed to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, who commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known exemplars and found that they matched, and determined that the paper, glue and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. Their final determination was that the diary is authentic. On March 23, 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed its authenticity.

Legacy

Statue of Anne Frank outside the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.

On May 3, 1957, a group of citizens including Otto Frank established the Anne Frank Foundation in an effort to save the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. Otto Frank insisted that the aim of the foundation would be to foster contact and communication between young people of different cultures, religions or racial backgrounds, and to oppose intolerance and racial discrimination.

The Anne Frank House opened on May 3, 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the achterhuis, all unfurnished so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind Perspex sheets. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbours, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as changing exhibits that chronicle different aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance in various parts of the world. It has become one of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, and is visited by more than half a million people each year.

In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife Fritzi set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. The Fonds raises money to donate to causes "as it sees fit". Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the proviso that the first 80,000 Swiss francs in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs, and any income above this figure was to be retained by the Fonds to use for whatever projects its administrators considered worthy. It provides funding for the medical treatment of the Righteous Among the Nations on a yearly basis. It has aimed to educate young people against racism and has loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report of the same year gave some indication of its effort to contribute on a global level, with its support of projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States .

Related topics

Holocaust and World War II related

Anne Frank in popular culture

File:5535 annefrank.jpg
Image of 5535 Annefrank taken by the Stardust space probe
  • TIME magazine considered Anne Frank one of 100 most influential people of the 20th Century.
  • 5535 Annefrank — an asteroid named after Anne Frank
  • Neutral Milk Hotel — US indie rock band whose 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was inspired by the lead singer Jeff Mangum's affection for Anne Frank. It includes the songs, Holland 1945 ('The only girl I ever loved/ Was born with roses in her eyes/ And then they buried her/ Alive, one evening 1945/ With just her sister at her side/ And only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone') and Oh Comely ('I know they buried her body with others/ Her sister and mother and five hundred families/ And would she remember me fifty years later/ I wish I could save her/ In some sort of time machine')
  • A punk band from Boulder, Colorado named themselves Anne Frank on Crank, which by their explanation suggests they are "disenfranchised, yet somehow empowered."
  • In response to hearing a Born-again Christian's insistence that Anne Frank's virtues alone would not gain her a place in Heaven, Ani DiFranco wrote and performed Did Anne Frank Find Jesus?, a hidden track on her live album Living in Clip ('Did Jesus find Buddha? Let's all just find each other. I wanna find Anne Frank before I bite it.')
  • Winona Ryder's character in the movie Mermaids is asked by Christina Ricci's character what she wishes for, to which she replies, 'I wish I'd known Anne Frank.'
  • Philip Roth — U.S. novelist whose novel The Ghost Writer imagines Anne Frank surviving the war and living anonymously as a writer in the United States.
  • The Bernard Kops play Dreams of Anne Frank (1993) re-imagines her concealment in Amsterdam, using elements of fantasy and song.
  • Marc Chagall — illustrated a limited edition of The Diary of Anne Frank.
  • Outkast — US hip-hop band whose track So Fresh, So Clean from their album Stankonia, makes a knowing reference to Anne Frank('I love who you are/ I love who you ain't/ You're so Anne Frank/ Let's hit the attic and hide out for two weeks').
  • Anne Frank Conquers the Moon Nazis, a tongue-in-cheek webcomic by Bill Mudron, about a resurrected Anne Frank rebuilt cybernetically to defend the Earth from an extra-terrestrial Nazi assault, ran online until 2003.
  • Geoff Ryman's novel 253 features an elderly Anne Frank as a passenger on the London Underground
  • In 2004 Robert Steadman composed a twenty-minute musical work for choir and string orchestra entitled Tehillim for Anne which commemorated Anne Frank's life with settings of three Psalms in Hebrew.

See also

References

Further reading

  • Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt, translated by B. M. Mooyaart, Bantam, mass market paperback, 304 pages, ISBN 0553296981
  • The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, Anne Frank, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold Van der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, compiled by H. J. J. Hardy, second edition, Doubleday 2003, hardcover, 736 pages, ISBN 0385508476. Prepared by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. Compares three versions of the diary; the original notes, the version revised by Anne Frank, and the final edition as it appeared in English. Includes an extensive study of its authenticity, biographies of the Frank family and their associates, and commentaries on Anne Frank's cultural legacy.
  • Anne Frank's Tales From the Secret Annexe, Anne Frank, translated by Michel Mok and Ralph Manheim, Washington Square Press, copyright 1949 and 1960 by Otto Frank and in 1982 by Anne-Frank Fonds, English translation copyright 1952 and 1959 by Otto Frank and 1983 by Doubleday and Company, edition of September 1983, paperback, 156 pages, ISBN 0671458574. Relates short works of fiction by Anne Frank, as well as short essays by the same author.
  • Roses from the Earth: the Biography of Anne Frank, Carol Ann Lee, foreword by Buddy Elias, Penguin 1999, 297 pages, ISBN 0670881406. Exhaustively researched biography of Anne Frank written with the approval of her surviving family.
  • Anne Frank: the Biography, Melissa Muller, foreword by Miep Gies, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber, Bloomsbury 1999, 330 pages, ISBN 0747543720.
  • The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Ernst Schnabel, Pan 1988, 158 pages, ISBN 0330029967. Considered a source for Anne Frank's later biographers, this was the first biography published about her (in German, 1958). Notable for its interviews with all of those who hid the Frank and van Pels families, the widow of Fritz Pfeffer, Otto Frank, neighbours and friends of Anne Frank, and several survivors who met them in the death camps.
  • The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin 2002, 364 pages, ISBN 0670913316. Biography of Anne Frank's father, drawing on many previously unpublished sources and venturing a new suspect as the betrayer.
  • The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, Willy Lindwer, translated by Alison Meersschaert, Pantheon 1991, 204 pages, ISBN 0679401458. The testimonies of six women who were witness to the last months of Anne Frank's life in the Nazi concentration camps, including Hannah Goslar, who knew Anne Frank before she went into hiding, and Janny Brilleslijper who buried her in Bergen-Belsen.
  • Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies, with Alison Leslie Gold, Simon and Schuster 1987, 252 pages, ISBN 0671662341. Autobiography of one of the Frank family's protectors, detailing the two years in hiding, the arrest, and its aftermath.
  • A Friend Called Anne, Jaqueline Van Maarsen, with Carole Ann Lee, Penguin 2004, 130 pages, ISBN 0141317248. The war memories of one of Anne Frank's friends.
  • Hannah Goslar Remembers, Alison Leslie Gold, Bloomsbury 1998, 135 pages, ISBN 0747540276. Biography of the girl who knew Anne Frank for ten years, and latterly met her in Bergen-Belsen shortly before her death.
  • The Roommate of Anne Frank, Nanda Van Der Zee, Apsekt 2003, 94 pages, ISBN 905911096x. Short biography of Fritz Pfeffer based on the discovered letters and photo albums of his widow.
  • Eva's Story, Eva Schloss, with Evelyn Julia Kent, WH Allen 1988, 224 pages. Memoir by a neighbour of Anne Frank, whose mother married Otto Frank in 1953. Describes their persecution and incarceration in Auschwitz.
  • Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa, Susan Goldman Rubin, Abrams 2003, ISBN 0810945142. Biography of two U.S sisters who conducted a pre-war correspondance with Anne and Margot Frank.
  • The Story of Anne Frank, Ruud van der Rol, translated by Arnold J Pomerans, Anne Frank House 2004, ISBN 9072972872. Comprehensive visual biography of Anne Frank, using high resolution images of Anne Frank's manuscripts and reproductions of hundreds of family photographs.
  • Anne Frank: Reflections on her life and legacy, edited by Hyman A Enzer and Sandra Solotaroff-Enzer, University of Illinois Press 2000, 265 pages, ISBN 0252068238. Anthology of interviews, essays and articles surveying the life and cultural impact of Anne Frank.
  • Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum: Inscribing Spirituality and Sexuality, Denise De Costa, Rutgers University Press 1998, ISBN 0813525500. Joint psychological study of the Jewish Dutch War diarists, examining their motivation to write, spiritual beliefs and sexuality.

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