My Operafrankly, my dear, i do give a damn!
Friday, March 12, 2010 9:51:01 PM
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Maim - early March 1945 in Bergen Belsen) is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. By nationality, she was officially considered a German until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the same year as the Nazis gained power in Germany. By the beginning of 1940 they were trapped in Amsterdam due to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of her father Otto Frank's office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they both died of typhus in March 1945.
Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into many languages. The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.
Frank was born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, the second daughter of Otto Frank (1889-1980) and
Edith Frank-Hollander (1900-45). Margot Frank (1926-45) was her elder sister.
The Franks were liberal Jews and lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, where the children grew up with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish friends. The Frank family did not observe all of the customs and traditions of Judaism. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.On 13 March 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won. Antisemitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately, and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later that year, Edith and the children went to Aachen, where they stayed with Edith's mother, Rosa Hollander.
Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organise the business and to arrange accommodation for his family. The Franks were among about 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.Otto Frank began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in Amsterdam. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the two girls were enrolled in school - Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading and writing.
Her friend Hanneli Goslar later recalled that from early childhood, Anne frequently wrote, though she shielded her work with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing. Margot and Anne had highly distinct personalities, Margot being well-mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. He was a Jewish butcher, who had fled Osnabruck in Germany with his family. In 1939, Edith's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Margot and Anne were excelling in their studies and had many friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum. In April 1941, Otto Frank took action to prevent Pectacon from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. He transferred his shares in Pectacon to Johannes Kleiman, and resigned as director. The company was liquidated and all assets transferred to Gies and Company, headed by Jan Gies. In December 1941, he followed a similar process to save Opekta. The businesses continued with little obvious change and their survival allowed Otto Frank to earn a minimal income, but sufficient to provide for his family.
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Anne received a book she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-green plaid cloth and with a small lock on the front, Anne decided she would use it as a diary, and began writing in it almost immediately.
While many of her early entries relate the mundane aspects of her life, she also discusses some of the changes that had taken place in the Netherlands since the German occupation. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions that had been placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population, and also notes her sorrow at the death of her grandmother earlier in the year. Anne dreamed about becoming an actress. She loved watching movies, but the Dutch Jews were forbidden access to movie theaters from 8 January 1941 onwards.
In July 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle fur judische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Anne was told by her father that the family would go into hiding in rooms above and behind the company's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals, where some of Otto Frank's most trusted employees would help them. The call-up notice forced them to relocate several weeks earlier than had been anticipated.
On the morning of Monday, 6 July 1942, the family moved into the hiding place. Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto Frank left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. The need for secrecy forced them to leave behind Anne's cat, Moortje. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport, they walked several kilometers from their home, with each of them wearing several layers of clothing as they did not dare to be seen carrying luggage.
The Achterhuis (a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house, translated as the "Secret Annexe" in English editions of the diary) was a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. Two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom and toilet, were on the first level, and above that a larger open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the Achterhuis was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered. The main building, situated a block from the Westerkerk, was nondescript, old and typical of buildings in the western quarters of Amsterdam.Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman,
Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding, and with Gies's husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, were their "helpers" for the duration of their confinement.
These contacts provided the only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Anne wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that if caught they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.
On 13 July, the Franks were joined by the van Pels family: Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by
Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him to be insufferable and resented his intrusion, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. She regarded Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer as selfish, particularly in regard to the amount of food they consumed. Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two entered a romance. She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for him were genuine, or resulted from their shared confinement.,
Anne Frank formed a close bond with each of the helpers and Otto Frank later recalled that she had anticipated their daily visits with impatient enthusiasm. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist... the two of them often stood whispering in the corner."In her writing, Anne Frank examined her relationships with the members of her family, and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She considered herself to be closest emotionally to her father, who later commented, "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did." Anne and Margot formed a closer relationship than had existed before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticised Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Anne wrote, "Margot's much nicer... She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."
Anne frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and of her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942 she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness," before concluding, "She's not a mother to me." Later, as she revised her diary, Anne felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?" She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's, and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Anne began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.Margot and Anne each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able, and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took a shorthand course by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks. Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God, and how she defined human nature.
Anne aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:
"I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ...
And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ... I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?" -Anne Frank
She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.
On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Achterhuis was stormed by the German Security Police (Grüne Polizei) following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified. Led by Schutzstaffel Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The Franks, van Pelses and Pfeffer were taken to the Gestapo headquarters where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to Westerbork. Ostensibly a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at Amersfoort. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various work camps until the war's end. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl
were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but were not detained. They returned to the Achterhuis the following day, and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.
On September 3, the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and arrived after a three-day journey. In the chaos that marked the unloading of the trains, the men were forcibly separated from the women and children, and Otto Frank was wrenched from his family. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than fifteen—were sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne had turned fifteen three months earlier and was one of the youngest people to be spared from her transport. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, and never learned that the entire group from the Achterhuis had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.
With the other females not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day, the women were used as slave labor and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Witnesses later testified Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers, though other witnesses reported more often she displayed strength and courage, and her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for Edith, Margot and herself. Disease was rampant and before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies. She and Margot were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness, and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them, through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.
Memorial for Margot and Anne Frank at the former Bergen-Belsen site, along with floral and pictorial tributes.On 28 October, selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank and Auguste van Pels, were transported, but Edith Frank was left behind and later died from starvation. Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were confined in another section of the camp. Goslar and Blitz both survived the war and later discussed the brief conversations they had conducted with Anne through a fence.
Blitz described her as bald, emaciated and shivering and Goslar noted Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot, who was severely ill. Neither of them saw Margot as she was too weak to leave her bunk. Anne told both Blitz and Goslar she believed her parents were dead, and for that reason did not wish to live any longer. Goslar later estimated their meetings had taken place in late January or early February, 1945.In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp and killed approximately 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and a few days later Anne died. They state this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945, although the exact dates were not recorded. After liberation, the camp was burned in an effort to prevent further spread of disease, and Anne and Margot were buried in a mass grave, the exact whereabouts of which is unknown.
After the war, it was estimated of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived. It was also estimated up to 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two-thirds of this group of people survived the war.
Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies, as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, in Auschwitz, but he remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, he discovered Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends, and learned many had been murdered.
Susanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents, though her sister, Barbara, a close friend of Margot, had survived. Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of both Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid 1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of Anne and Margot, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary, along with a bundle of loose notes that she had saved, in the hope that she could have returned them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realised Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He also noted that he saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter, and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings... She had kept all these feelings to herself." Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.
Anne's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts and she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognise her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's 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 Dussell. In this edited version, she also addressed each entry to "Kitty," a fictional character in Cissy van Marxveldt's Joop ter Heul novels that Anne enjoyed reading. 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 in which Anne is critical of her parents (especially her mother), 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.
Otto Frank gave the diary to the historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, 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 3 April 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 the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis in 1947, followed by a second run in 1950.It was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and after being rejected by several publishers, was first published in the United Kingdom in 1952. The first American edition was published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and was positively reviewed. It was successful in France, Germany and the United States, but in the United Kingdom it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. Its most noteworthy success was in Japan where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition. In Japan, Anne Frank quickly became identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war.
A play based upon the diary, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered in New York City on 5 October 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. The biographer, Melissa Müller, later wrote that the dramatization had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story." 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, the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation published the "Critical Edition" of the diary. It includes comparisons from all known versions, both edited and unedited. It also includes discussion asserting its authentication, as well as additional historical information relating to the family and the diary itself.
Cornelis Suijk - a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation - announced in 1999 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 discuss 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 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.
The diary has been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing style, the dramatist Meyer Levin commended Frank for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel", and was so impressed by the quality of her work that he collaborated with Otto Frank on a dramatisation of the diary shortly after its publication. Meyer became obsessed with Anne Frank, which he wrote about in his autobiography The Obsession. The poet John Berryman wrote it was a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the "conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty."
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." John F. Kennedy discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech and said, "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank." In the same year, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote of her: "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." Also in 1994, Vaclav Havel said "Anne Frank's legacy is very much alive and it can address us fully" in relation to the political and social changes occurring at the time in former Eastern Bloc countries.
Primo Levi suggested Anne Frank is frequently identified as a single representative of the millions of people who suffered and died as she did because, "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live." In her closing message in Melissa Muller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies expressed a similar thought, though she attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolises 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."
Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, saying, "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honor and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He also 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." Simon Wiesenthal later expressed a similar opinion when he said that Anne Frank's diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during the Nuremberg Trials, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this."In June 1999, Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century." Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons," and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world - the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He also notes while her courage and pragmatism are admired, it is her ability to analyze herself and the quality of her writing are the key components of her appeal. He writes, "The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition."
On 3 May 1957, a group of citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting in an effort to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 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 in 2005 received a record 965,000 visitors. The House provides information via the internet, as well as travelling exhibitions, for those not able to visit. In 2005, exhibitions travelled to 32 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.
In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, 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 provision 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.
The Merwedeplein apartment, in which the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the early 2000s, when a television documentary focused public attention upon it. In a serious state of disrepair, it was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation, and aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions of the apartment and furnishings in letters written by Anne Frank, was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House, and Anne Frank's cousin Bernhard "Buddy" Elias also contributed to the restoration project. It opened in 2005 with the aim of providing a safe haven for a selected writer who is unable to write freely in his or her own country. Each selected writer is allowed one year's tenancy during which to reside and work in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet, El-Mahdi Acherchour.In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artifacts are Frank family photographs taken in Germany and Holland and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945 informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.
In November 2007, the Anne Frank tree was scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling down on one of the surrounding buildings, after a fungal disease had affected the trunk of this horse-chestnut tree. Dutch economist Arnold Heertje, who was also in hiding during the Second World War,[citation needed] said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews." The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case in order to stop the felling of the horse chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered the city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution. The parties agreed to build a steel construction that would prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years.
Over the years, several films about Anne Frank appeared and her life and writings have inspired a diverse group of artists and social commentators to make reference to her in literature, popular music, television, and other forms of media. These include The Anne Frank Ballet by Adam Darius, first performed in 1959,
and the choral work Annelies, first performed in 2005. The only known footage of the real Anne Frank comes from a 1941 silent film recorded for her newly-wed next-door neighbor.
She is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to see the bride and groom better. The couple survived the war and gave the video to the Anne Frank House, a museum in Amsterdam.In 1999, Time named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list The Most Important People of the Century, stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity." -source :: wikipedia & -source :: mijn tijdmachine naar andere tijden Wie was Anne Frank?
Shoah survivors slam Lebanese ban of Anne Frank's dairy: American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants denounces Hezbollah's 'disgraceful act' as a twin blow against decency. 'It is a blatant expression of Holocaust denial, and an assault on one of the great works of modern literature and civilization,' group says
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants recently slammed Hezbollah for censoring Anne Frank's diary out of a school textbook. According to Middle East media sources, the Lebanese group claimed that the classic work promotes Zionism.
The controversy erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of "The Diary of Anne Frank" were included in a textbook used by a private English-language school in Beirut. Hezbollah's al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.
The American Jewish group said it denounced "this disgraceful act" as a twin blow against decency. "It is a blatant expression of Holocaust denial, and an assault on one of the great works of modern literature and civilization."
In a statement broadcast on Hezbollah's TV station and posted on its website, the group declared, "What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted," and asked how long Lebanon would "remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education."
According to the Holocaust survivors, the banning of the diary - written by a young girl while hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators in an attic in Amsterdam - demonstrates the fundamental hatred of Islamic extremists for all things Jewish, not just Israel and Zionism.
The Frank family was deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne died at age 15. Her father, who survived, had the diary published when the war was over.
The American Gathering commended the Paris-based organization, Aladdin's Project - which fights Holocaust denial and first translated Anne Frank's diary into Arabic - for issuing a strong statement condemning Hezbollah's "intimidation campaign." - source :: Rabbi Levi Brackman, Rivkah Lubitch, Rabbi Michael Graetz, Ynetnews Published: 11.13.09, 07:30 / Israel Jewish Scene
Schools Pull Anne Frank's Diary From Curricula Because of "Vagina" Passage
"There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it," wrote Anne Frank in her famous diary. "The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!"
This, according to the Washington Post is the passage that caused Culpepper County, Virginia, school public officials to pull the book from the shelves.
This passage is present in the Definitive Edition of Anne Frank's memoir, written between 1942 and 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
This book is usually assigned to eighth-graders.
"What we have asked is that this particular edition will not be taught," said Jim Allen, director of instruction for the school system. "I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. So we listened to the parent and we pulled it."
The book will still be taught; the original work published by the girl's father, Otto Frank, was heavily edited before publication in 1947, eliminating young Frank's criticism of other people living in the Annex and all her discussions about sexuality.
It wasn't until the 50th anniversary of Anne Frank's death, in 1995, that the Anne Frank Foundation published the unedited, definitive version, which contains the passage. From now on, the edited version free of these passages will be used.
"I'm happy when parents get involved with these things because it lets me know that they are really looking and have their kids' best interest (in mind). And that's where good parenting and good teaching comes in," Allen said.
Sex is evil! Water it down! Cut it away! Sanitize everything there is to read about it! Come on, world! This will definitely help our children grow up informed and aware!
If our sarcasm isn't clear in the above statement, we'll make it clear: we here at Sex and the 405 do not approve of this move.
I would also like to take this moment to thank my parents for sending me to private schools all of my life, most of which were run by super-progressive heretics.
-source :: The Star Exponent and The Washington Post, via Eric Ludzenski, Posted 29 Jan 2010 by Anaiis in Books, Culture, Freedom, News
Diary of Anne Frank Pulled From School I was floored this week when I read, "Diary of Anne Frank pulled from a School shelf." I mean how many of you remember the story of Anne Frank? The reason it was pulled was due to two sentences Anne used when describing her "vagina." But apparently some parents weren't too happy to hear about this and asked that they skip this part of the lessons, but instead of skipping it the Culpepper (Virginia) School decided to pull that particular book from the class and use another one that doesn't include this passage.
"There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it," wrote Anne Frank in her famous diary. "The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!"
Apparently there are many forms of this story, with each one having been edited and changed a bit. The one that the parents were upset over is the "Diary of Anne Frank" the Definitive Edition. This is a red book that was published in 1995 that has been unedited and contains everything that would’ve been stated.
The good news is that the school did't take out this lesson from their list, instead they are just using the edited editions. What are your thoughts on this? Should they have bent over and took this particular book off the reading list or kept the one they were using? -source :: by: Eliza Ferree, blisstree.com/live/
Stop perverting Anne Frank's diary: Banning the diary from schools because she wrote about sex is bizarre. But so are the attempts to turn it into a guide to life.'I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!'
Sixty-five years after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the young Anne Frank's reflection on her aspiration to become a celebrated writer is tragically poignant. Tens of millions of people have now read her diary, which she started keeping as a schoolgirl on her thirteenth birthday and continued throughout her time in hiding in Amsterdam during the Second World War.
The first, edited version of Frank's diary was published in 1947 under the title The Diary of a Young Girl. In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, a new version was published: The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. This version is now the cause of controversy in the US, where it has emerged that a Virginia school district, which has 7,600 pupils, decided to stop assigning the diary to eighth-grade English students following a parent's complaint that some of the sexual references in the book are inappropriate.
The definitive edition contains 30 per cent more material than the original one, including passages where Frank writes about her erotic feelings and expresses curiosity about sex and wonderment at the physicality of female genitalia:
'There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!'
These most private and intimate thoughts of a teenager, along with some unflattering descriptions of her mother and other residents of 'the secret annex' where the Frank family hid, were originally excised by her father, Otto Frank. This was partly out of respect for the dead, and partly because of demands by the original publishers that the book be kept short.
Anne Frank herself edited, tweaked and redrafted her diary after hearing a radio broadcast from London, in which a minister of the Dutch government-in-exile urged his people to collect eyewitness accounts of the Nazi occupation. This gave Frank the idea of writing a book, which she provisionally titled The Secret Annex. At the same time, she kept up the original diary. These two versions are known as version A and version B, respectively. When Otto Frank decided to publish his daughter's diary, he edited the two versions into a shorter book, version C, or The Diary of a Young Girl.
Today, Anne Frank's diary, which is probably the most famous personal account of the Holocaust, has been translated into over 50 languages. There have been TV, cinema and theatre adaptations; it was even turned into a musical in Spain two years ago. It has become staple reading in schools across the world, and in Amsterdam tourists form constant ringlet-shaped queues outside the Franks' hiding place, which has been turned into a museum. On the facade of the building there is plaque which reads, in Dutch, 'Anne Frank Huis,' where visitors keenly pose for portraits.
Anne Frank has become the patron saint of the Holocaust - an ordinary, pure and innocent heroine. There's no doubting, of course, that she was a victim of forces beyond her control. But in the context of the increasing tendency to teach schoolchildren, as well as the general public, about the Holocaust in an individualised and emotive manner, the life of Anne Frank has become the perfect snapshot story of an innocent victim from which we are meant to draw all sorts of moralistic lessons, not just about the Holocaust but also about life today. In this sense, she has become something other than just one of millions whose lives were destroyed by the Nazis. She has, in posterity, been turned into a symbol of all that is good and pure in the world and we are expected to draw numerous contemporary lessons from her diaries - about racism, anti-social behaviour, bullying, censorship, and so on.
The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, for instance, includes an exhibition called Free2Choose, which encourages visitors to reflect on issues concerning human rights and freedoms, and there are various international projects and exhibitions, aimed primarily at young people, that use the story of Anne Frank to teach lessons about today, even if the issues dealt with had little, if any, bearing on her life in 1940s Europe. The presumption here is that young people can learn from her diary how to be good people.
So it is not surprising that many have reacted angrily to the idea that young people, as suggested by the parent who felt that Anne Frank's diary is not suitable for schoolchildren, should be shielded from her writing - because her diary is seen as essential to young people's social and individual development.
It was in November last year that Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia decided to stop assigning the definitive edition of The Diary of a Young Girl to its students, but this only came to light at the end of last week after a local paper reported it. After the parent complained, school officials decided to use the earlier, vagina reference-free version of the diary. According to a Washington Post report, Culpeper's own 'public complaint about learning resources' policy, which requires complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate, was not followed in this instance.
It appears that school officials acted pre-emptively. Based on the complaint of just one parent, they thought it would be better to avoid arguments and debates and just give students the 'less offensive' version of the diary. This decision is deplorable, treating young people as being incapable of focusing on anything other than Anne Frank's sporadic ruminations on sex and romance.
Yet if banning the full version of Frank's diary is daft, then so is the elevation of the diary into a kind of guidebook for life for young people across the Western world. Frank's diary has been turned into a morality tale, to be fitted into any mould necessary to teach people of all ages how to behave.
Of course, we can learn a lot from reading Frank's diary and from studying the fate of the Frank family. But the endless attempts to suck every kind of moral fable from the diary in order to lecture young people around the world about how to become model citizens do little to help remember the historically-specific circumstances of Frank's life, to encourage readers to appreciate the flair of her writing or the courage of the people who helped her.
For instance, if children are asked to draw parallels between bullying victims and Anne Frank, they are in effect being encouraged to regard Nazism as severe teasing and to view the Final Solution as an extreme social exclusion policy. This is not serving the purpose of preserving history or respecting the memory of the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Instead, it is serving very specific, contemporary agendas and only helps to skew history.
It is true that although, as her writing elucidates, the circumstances around Frank's death were thankfully historically specific, many of the themes she explored in her diary are universal and timeless: growing up, falling in love, relating to your family, dreaming about the future. It's all the stuff of teenage life. Her writing is captivating, her story fascinating, and her fate tragic. It is neither surprising nor wrong that Frank's diary - which references not just the horrors of the German occupation of the Netherlands and the travails of Jews in Europe, but also the coming-of-age of a perceptive and articulate young girl - has captured the imagination of millions of children and adults. But just as Frank should not - regardless of what version of her diary we read - be seen as morally compromising for teenagers, who might be encouraged to become vagina-inspecting, sexual beasts, it is equally bizarre to expect that reading her diary can turn young people into politically correct saints. - source :: Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of spiked, www.spiked-online.com/index.php
CCPS pulls explicit text
A version of an iconic autobiography detailing a young Jewish girl' two-year experience hiding from Nazis in a cramped "ecret Annex"has been pulled from the shelves of Culpeper County Public Schools.
"he Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition,"a vivid memoir of Anne Frank' private thoughts during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, will no longer be assigned to CCPS students, according to Jim Allen, director of instruction for the school system.
This book is usually given to eighth-grade middle school English students to read.
Citing a parent' concern over the sexual nature of the vagina passage in the definitive edition, Allen said school officials immediately chose to pull this version and use an alternative copy. "What we have asked is that this particular edition will not be taught," Allen said from his office Wednesday morning. "I don't want to make a big deal out of this. So we listened to the parent and we pulled it."
Apparently, Anne's father, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the "Secret Annex," felt the need to censor his daughter's most intimate thoughts as well, eliminating about 30 percent of the original diary published in 1947.
He omitted parts where Anne criticized her mother and other Jews living in the confined quarters as well as some sexually suggestive references.
However, during the 50th anniversary of her death in a concentration camp, the Anne Frank Foundation published the unedited definitive version in 1995.
Sometimes dubbed controversial, this book has been translated into more than 50 languages - an English version in 1952, and transformed into a play and several movie versions.
The diary, which Anne received on her 13th birthday, chronicles the teenager's life from July 1942 until she was arrested in August 1944. It is considered the most widely read literary composition about Holocaust victims.
According to Allen, a teacher had already assigned the book in the fall and students had completed the assignment before the complaint was made.
"I'm happy when parents get involved with these things because it lets me know that they are really looking and have their kids' best interest (in mind). And that's where good parenting and good teaching comes in." The alternative version will be used for future assignments, he said.
The process of pulling a book: According to the school division's "public complaint about learning resources" policy, a review committee consisting of the school's principal, library media specialist, teacher, complainant, parent and/or student usually convene to discuss this type of issue.
The committee's responsibility is to read, view or listen to the challenged material, read several reviews, check standard selection aids, talk with knowledgeable people about the material in question, make and file a recommendation with the principal and superintendent and notify the complainant of the recommendation. The complainant has the right to appeal any decision.
Allen suggested teachers become more familiar with any reading material before issuing an assignment and described this situation as a "teachable moment."
Asked about other "pulled material," Allen said there's no specific list that he's aware of for educations to use as a refernce.
"I don't think a list exists," he added. "We just try to deal with everything on a case-by-case basis."
Any pulled material, Allen said, is usually stored in the librarian's office.
According to Amazon.com, "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl," tops the list of commonly banned children's books in public schools nationwide.The reason listed for banning this book is "for being too depressing for students." Other books that made the Amazon list include "The Catcher in the Rye," "Harry Potter," "Of Mice and Men," and "Harriet the Spy," to name a few. -source :: Rhonda Simmons, rsimmons@starexponent.com, (540) 825-0771 ext. 125 Published: January 28, 2010 Updated: January 29, 2010
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