Saturday is the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust. I am therefore re-posting Dara Horn's excellent and important article on Holocaust erasure.
Some TFL readers are probably familiar with the work of the novelist Dara Horn, who has written many fine books. Her recent article in Smithsonian Magazine raises deeply unsettling questions about the appropriation of Anne Frank’s story in a way that all but obliterates her connection to Judaism and the Holocaust. It is essential reading on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938).
Here are a few key paragraphs:
BECOMING ANNE FRANK
People love dead Jews. Living Jews, not so much.
This disturbing idea was suggested by an incident this past spring at the Anne Frank House, the blockbuster Amsterdam museum built out of Frank’s “Secret Annex,” or in Dutch, “Het Achterhuis [The House Behind],” a series of tiny hidden rooms where the teenage Jewish diarist lived with her family and four other persecuted Jews for over two years, before being captured by Nazis and deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Here’s how much people love dead Jews: Anne Frank’s diary, first published in Dutch in 1947 via her surviving father, Otto Frank, has been translated into 70 languages and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, and the Anne Frank House now hosts well over a million visitors each year, with reserved tickets selling out months in advance. But when a young employee at the Anne Frank House in 2017 tried to wear his yarmulke to work, his employers told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museum’s managing director told newspapers that a live Jew in a yarmulke might “interfere” with the museum’s “independent position.” The museum finally relented after deliberating for six months, which seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding.
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There is an exculpatory ease to embracing this “young girl,” whose murder is almost as convenient for her many enthusiastic readers as it was for her persecutors, who found unarmed Jewish children easier to kill off than the Allied infantry. After all, an Anne Frank who lived might have been a bit upset at the Dutch people who, according to the leading theory, turned in her household and received a reward of approximately $1.40 per Jew. An Anne Frank who lived might not have wanted to represent “the children of the world,” particularly since so much of her diary is preoccupied with a desperate plea to be taken seriously—to not be perceived as a child. Most of all, an Anne Frank who lived might have told people about what she saw at Westerbork, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and people might not have liked what she had to say.
And here is the most devastating fact of Frank’s posthumous success, which leaves her real experience forever hidden: We know what she would have said, because other people have said it, and we don’t want to hear it.
A member of a Native American Indian tribe told me the exact same thing about his heritage. As long as Indians are in a museum, White people like us. "That's where Indians belong" he noted.
Posted by: The Law Offcies of Kavanaugh Thomas, LLC, PC, LTD, Chartered, AV Rated | November 09, 2018 at 05:08 PM
There is something more deeply true about the first sentence ("People love dead Jews. Living Jews, not so much.") than may appear at first blush. Think millions of Germans, during the war, going to church every Sunday to worship.
Posted by: anon | November 09, 2018 at 06:35 PM