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October 29, 2004
Revisiting Anne Frank
Lessons of hope may be misplaced, says lecturer.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
The legacy of Anne Frank was the subject of a deep reconsideration
in Vancouver earlier this month. The lessons of forgiveness and
optimism that readers frequently take from Frank's diary may not
reflect the reality of her post-diary experience, according to a
provocative lecture.
Prof. Rolf Wolfswinkel, a Holocaust scholar at New York University,
delivered the address Oct. 14, opening a new exhibit on Anne Frank
at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
Wolfswinkel has analyzed Frank's diary and also studied the cultural
phenomena that have surrounded it. There was a degree of self-consciousness
to the diary that readers sometimes forget, Wolfswinkel said. Though
Frank had been keeping a diary since before the family went into
hiding, the journal took a turn when the Dutch government-in-exile
broadcast pleas over the radio for individuals to collect documents,
letters and diaries in order to provide a post-war record of events.
At that point, Frank began transcribing and rewriting her diary,
with a larger audience in mind.
Wolfswinkel notes that the diary underwent more revisions after
the Holocaust. Otto Frank, Anne's father and the only survivor of
the eight who took refuge in the attic, edited the diary before
its first publication, omitting some aspects dealing with Anne's
emerging sexuality and Anne's disparaging comments about her mother.
This editing has been used since by Holocaust deniers and historical
revisionists, according to Wolfswinkel, to undercut the legitimacy
of the document, accusing Otto Frank of tampering or outright fabrication.
In 1998, Wolfswinkel said, five of the pages Otto Frank had clipped
from the diary re-emerged. The contempt with which Anne Frank had
clearly held her mother in these pages betrays the beatific image
that has been created of Frank, said Wolfswinkel. But speaking ill
of her mother is not the only area where Frank's humanity may diverge
from the idealized image of martyred youth.
The optimism expressed in Frank's diary was deconstructed by both
Wolfswinkel and Dr. Robert Krell, a Vancouver psychiatrist and himself
a child survivor who lived out the war years in hiding, who welcomed
Wolfswinkel to the stage.
"One can have hope after reading the diary," Wolfswinkel
said. "One cannot have hope after Auschwitz." Though Frank's
diary has been read by generations of young people as a first introduction
to the Holocaust, the flaw in interpreting the diary is that it
leaves off at precisely the moment when Frank's life took its most
catastrophic turn.
One of the segments that is commonly quoted from the diary as a
monument to human capability for hope is Frank's comment: "In
spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart."
Wolfswinkel noted that the words, it needs to be remembered, were
written not in the "Dante's hell" that was Auschwitz,
but in "hell's antechamber," the annex where Frank's life
was difficult, but remained far less monstrous and catastrophic
than it would become when the secret annex was discovered.
"Had she survived, what might she have written?" asked
Krell. From her limited vantage point of the annex, Frank may have
been able to maintain an optimistic outlook, but could she have
maintained it in Auschwitz? Aspects of the exhibit on now at the
Holocaust centre suggest Frank's optimism may have died before her.
Frank would have turned 75 years old the day of the event but, like
93 per cent of the children of Europe, she perished during the Holocaust.
The exhibit currently on display at the Holocaust centre explores
Frank's life before, during and after her diary was being written
and contains testimony from people who saw Anne and her sister,
Margot, in the camps.
"We saw each other once again in Bergen-Belsen," said
Hannah Pick-Goslar, a school friend of Anne's. "It wasn't the
same Anne. She was a broken girl.... It was so terrible."
The event was organized to mark the 10th anniversary of the Vancouver
Holocaust Education Centre as well as to launch the opening of a
major Anne Frank exhibit, which is being accompanied by a series
of panels, lectures and film screenings over the next several weeks.
More information is available at www.vhec.org.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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