Anne Frank

by Francine Prose

  Nearly all of those who had read it before mentioned that they’d previously had almost no sense of the book as literature but only as a historical document, or as some sort of young-adult coming-of-age memoir. One student said he’d gotten funny looks and sarcastic remarks from his Bard schoolmates (not those enrolled in the class) when they saw him reading Anne Frank’s diary. They acted as if he were assuming some sort of ironic-regressive pose that involved carrying around a children’s classic, the equivalent of using his grade school lunch box as an attaché case.

  Nearly all of them talked about how (perhaps because they’d been so young themselves) they’d had little sense of Anne as a character—and, specifically, of how much she had changed and grown in two years. “What got to me,” said one young man, “is that she starts out as a little kid and matures and can see things more objectively. Instead of being mad at people she can step back and see herself. She comes to be this really wonderful human being. I loved the way it ends with her thinking how good life would be without other people in it. It makes it more tragic that she couldn’t fulfill all the talent and humanity that she had.”

  Another agreed. “She started out as such an innocent optimistic girl and she became so much more self-conscious and self-aware.”

  Yet another wrote, “Anne is stunning. She is so powerfully alive. (To phrase it this way sounds a little stupid to me but I’m not sure how else to say it.) Everything she describes about their Secret Annex is interesting because she is interacting with it, and telling about it in her insightful, hilarious way. She often talks about her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan and Dussel trying to discipline her or shame her into changing her behavior. We never actually see what happens before the adults go after her, because Anne is always writing after the fact, not accounting for her own behavior, whatever she did, but it is not hard to imagine. Anne was probably very hard to be around! She talked constantly; she spoke her mind, she felt strongly, and was only a thirteen-year-old. What a person to live with in a Secret Annex!

  “We get to be ‘Kitty,’ the friend she invents and addresses all of her entries to. Anne meets us for the first time and she slowly gets to know us and feel comfortable confiding in us. As Kitty, we are the depository for her secrets.”

  Except for one young woman, who had somehow gotten hold of the entire Critical Edition and realized (as most readers have not) the implications of the “a,” “b,” and “c” versions, my students were amazed to hear that Anne had gone back and revised her journal. But as soon as they’d had a chance to think about that, they felt, as I did, that this made the diary more impressive rather than less authentic.

  As the December dusk deepened outside the window and the classroom (I tried to avoid switching on the harsh fluorescent lights) grew darker, the students’ voices grew quieter, and they seemed sobered and saddened as they spoke about Anne’s last days. I kept thinking that these were precisely the sort of open-hearted, idealistic young people who might someday wind up working at a place like the Anne Frank Foundation, trying to improve our damaged and possibly doomed world. The tone in which they spoke about the diary evoked that of a eulogy, or of testimony. It was as if they were talking about a friend. One of my students summarized the essence of what he’d written in his response paper:

  I wonder if it is just me or if her writing is so personal that it is symptomatic of every reader, but I feel an emotional connection to Anne Frank through her writing. This is a testament to both the power of her writing and her character. To feel a real connection with a girl who has been dead for almost 63 years…is a strange emotional experience, but I feel as though I know her well. I know that, given the chance, we would have been close in life. We have a lot in common in terms of our interests and desires. She and I both love writing and history and loathe math and figures, and I admire her deep sense of self-awareness and her emotional transparency that is evident in her writing. She has a passion for self-expression I find very moving, and I wish I could be that honest and clear when I write for myself…Anne and I also share a passion for nature and recognize the power in the simple beauty of everyday experiences of nature. I can picture many a night where I have stared out my window in the same way; the beauty of the night filling me with excitement and keeping me awake…I think I may have read this book in grade school but I am very glad to have afresh look at it again now that I am 20 years old. There is so much here that passed me by.

  Listening to him, I thought: They would have been friends. She was a fifteen-year-old girl. She saw herself as both ordinary and special, growing up under circumstances that were in no way normal even as her parents insisted on going through the motions of everyday life. What was certain was that Anne did not grow up believing that she was going to be sent to Auschwitz, and die, at fifteen, in Bergen-Belsen.

  I listened to my students, as fresh and eager as she had been, only a few years older than she was when she died. I asked one of them to read aloud from the diary, and he chose the final entry, the passage in which Anne imagined the person she could have been if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

  When he finished, the class was silent. In the hush, I thought about Anne’s wish to go on living after her death. And it was clear to me, as it has been throughout the writing of this book, that her wish has been granted. I remembered how, more than fifty years ago, the first time I read the diary, I’d kept reading until the light had faded in my bedroom, as it had now, in this classroom. And for those few hours during which my students and I talked about her diary, it seemed to me that her spirit—or, in any case, her voice—had been there with us, fully present and utterly alive, audible in yet another slowly darkening room.

  Some Notes on the Text

  ONE OF THE COMPLICATIONS IN WRITING ABOUT ANNE Frank’s diary is created by the fact that she gave pseudonyms to the people with whom she shared the secret annex. Throughout the text, I have used the real names of the historical figures—for example, the Van Pels family—in place of the names these figures have been given in Anne’s diary—for example, the Van Daans. Exceptions occur when I am quoting from the Diary, or when I am referring to the characters in the play and the film, in which the real-life models are known exclusively by their pseudonyms.

  In the Netherlands, the Anne Frank House (that is, the building in which the secret annex is located) is known as the Anne Frank Museum. The organization that supports the museum and the human-rights programs associated with Anne Frank and her diary is called, in Dutch, the Anne Frank Stichting. Though Foundation is not a direct translation of Stichting, I have used the term Foundation for clarity. Also, as I have made clear, the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel is a separate organization.

  Notes

  The following abbreviation is used in the notes:

  DAF: The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition. Prepared by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. Edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday (New York: Doubleday, 2003).

  CHAPTER 1 The Book, The Life, The Afterlife

  “Anne would…” Interview with Hanneli Pick-Goslar on Scholastic Web site, www.scholastic.com.

  “If I haven’t any talent…” DAF, April 4, 1944.

  “I saw that Anne was writing…” Miep Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, with Alison Leslie Gold (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 186.

  “whether Anne Frank has had any serious readers…” John Berryman, The Freedom of the Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 92.

  “One thing is certain…” G. B. Stern, “Introduction to Tales from the House Behind, Kingswood, England, 1952. Harry Mulisch, “Death and the Maiden,” in Anne Frank: Reflections on her Life and Legacy, eds. Hyman A. Enzer and Sandra Solatoroff-Enzer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 81.

  “A child’s diary…” Harold Bloom, A Scholarly Look at the Diary of Anne Frank (New York: Chelsea House, 1999), 1.

  “T
he work by this child…” Reprinted in Enzer, Anne Frank: Reflections on Her Life and Legacy, 96.

  “I do not mean…” Robert Alter, “The View from the Attic: An Obsession with Anne Frank,” the New Republic, December 4, 1995, 58.

  “Of course…” DAF, March 29, 1944.

  “kept her company…” Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), 136.

  “Just imagine…” DAF, March 29, 1944.

  “I must work…” DAF, April 4, 1944.

  “Everything here…” DAF, April 14, 1944.

  “Whether these leanings…” DAF, May 11, 1944.

  “At long last…” DAF, May 20, 1944.

  “The Diary of a Young Girl is not…” Mirjam Pressler, Anne Frank: A Hidden Life (New York: Puffin Books, 2000), 15.

  “That ingenuous title…” Judith Thurman, “Not Even a Nice Girl,” Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007), 101.

  “if we take…” H. J. J. Hardy, “Documents Examination and Handwriting Identification of the Text Known as the Diary of Anne Frank: Summary of Findings,” DAF, The Revised Critical Edition, 166.

  “I am the best…” DAF, April 4, 1944.

  “What a comparison…” Thurman, “Not Even a Nice Girl,” 99.

  “Otherwise, it would have seemed…” Interview with David Barnouw, December 2007.

  She was the first to note…Laureen Nussbaum, “Anne Frank,” in Enzer, Anne Frank: Reflections, 21–31.

  “Five Precious Pages…” Ralph Blumenthal, “Five Precious Pages Renew Wrangling Over Anne Frank,” New York Times, September 10, 1998, A6.

  CHAPTER 2 The Life

  “I don’t want to set down…” DAF, June 20, 1942.

  “Miep had ten drinks…” DAF, May 8, 1944.

  “Miep made our mouths…” DAF, May 8, 1944.

  “as we are Jewish…” DAF, June 20, 1942.

  “God knows…” Melissa Müller, Anne Frank, The Biography, trans. Rita and Robert Kimber (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 132.

  “From then on…” Interview with Hanneli Pick-Goslar on Scholastic Web site, www. scholastic.com.

  “always fussing” Willi Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (New York: Random House, 1991), 16.

  “Once, when Mutti…” Eva Schloss with Evelyn Julia Kent, Eva’s Story (Great Britain: W. H. Allen and Co., 1988), 32.

  “When Anne…” Ernst Schnabel, Anne Frank, A Portrait in Courage (New York: Harcourt, 1958), 49.

  “knew her only from Anne’s girlhood days…” Schnabel, 58.

  “The rest of our family”…DAF, June 20, 1942.

  “All the correspondents…” Geert Mak, Amsterdam, trans. Philip Blom (London: The Harvill Press, 1999), 249.

  “Our North Sea…” Dick Van Galen Last and Rolf Wolfswinkel, Anne Frank and After: Dutch Holocaust Literature in a Historical Perspective (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), 43.

  “three marvelous days” Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, 68.

  “The school…” Anne Frank, Tales from the Secret Annex, trans. Susan Masotty (New York: Bantam Books, 2003), 52.

  One teacher…Dr. J. Presser, The Destruction of the Dutch Jews (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1969), 127.

  “So we could not do…” DAF, June 20, 1942.

  “Under proper guidance…” Heydrich, Minutes of Wannsee Conference.

  “At the end…” Last and Wolfswinkel, Anne Frank and After: Dutch Holocaust Literature in a Historical Perspective, 54.

  “Often one made…” Last and Wolfswinkel, 45.

  “Everybody had a family…” Last and Wolfswinkel, 69.

  “were a pleasure…” Last and Wolfswinkel, 10.

  “very blond young woman” Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, 44.

  “Jews were such an established part…” Gies, 29.

  “There is a look…” Gies, 88.

  “We would be going…” DAF, July 9, 1942.

  “A few days later…” Schnabel, Anne Frank, A Portrait in Courage, 103.

  “Primarily, however…” www. Annefrank.org.

  “The whole day…” DAF, July 10, 1942.

  “In the evenings…” DAF, November 19, 1942.

  “Another thing…” DAF, Sept 16, 1943.

  “concrete results” Harry Paape, “The Betrayal,” in Revised Critical Edition. p. 40.

  “Will the boy…” Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 208.

  “That was very messy…” Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, 1988, 52.

  “‘Anne, who was already sick…” Schnabel afterword to Diary of a Young Girl, 281.

  “had little squabbles…” Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, 104.

  “Anne stood in front of me…” Lindwer, 74.

  CHAPTER 3 The Book, Part I

  “as though he might…” Schnabel, Anne Frank, A Portrait in Courage, 133.

  “…zero was Anne Frank.” Simon Wiesenthal, The Murderers Among Us (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 171–183.

  “I am not…” Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, 11.

  “Never have we heard…” DAF, January 28, 1944.

  “You can see…” DAF, May 8, 1944.

  “He stood on the porch and rang…” Jon Blair, Director, Anne Frank Remembered, Sony Pictures, 1995.

  “I could tell…” Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, 235.

  “If we bear…” DAF, April 11, 1944.

  “the most moving…” Gerrold van der Stroom, “The Diaries, Het Achterhuis and the Translations,” DAF, 64.

  “witless barbarity”…“When I had finished…” Van der Stroom, DAF, 67.

  “diary of a normal child…” Romein, introduction, Het Achterhuis (Amsterdam: Contact, 1947), trans. Mark Schaevers.

  “A book intended…” Van der Stroom, DAF, 73.

  “It is an interesting document…” Letter to Otto Frank in Anne Frank archive.

  “One day…” Judith Jones, The Tenth Muse, My Life in Food (New York: Knopf, 2007), 46.

  “Let me say again…” Letter to Otto Frank in Anne Frank archive.

  “I love the book…” Letter to Otto Frank in Anne Frank archive.

  “Jewish Joan of Arc” Ian Buruma, “The Afterlife of Anne Frank,” the New York Review of Books, February 19, 1998, 4.

  “What she has left behind…” Antonia White, review of The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, The New Statesman, May 1953.

  “very charming” Letter from Donald Elder to Otto Frank in Anne Frank archive.

  “This is a remarkable…” DAF, introduction.

  “…jocular…away from the Jews.” Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 251, 661.

  “Reading your introduction…” Letter from Otto Frank to Eleanor Roosevelt in Anne Frank archive.

  “mission in publishing…” Letter from OF to ER in Anne Frank archive.

  “For little Anne Frank….” Meyer Levin, “The Child Behind the Secret Door,” the New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1952, 1.

  “one of the most moving…” Time magazine, June 16, 1952.

  “extraordinary…” Commonweal Volume 6, no. 12, June, 1952.

  “ANNE…” Letter from Barbara Zimmerman to Otto Frank in Anne Frank archive.

  CHAPTER 4 The Book, Part II

  Pressler, Anne Frank: A Hidden Life, 31.

  “I twist…” DAF, August 1, 1944.

  “I have one outstanding…” DAF, July 15, 1944.

  “Then a certain person…” DAF, August 4, 1943.

  “I see the eight of us…” DAF, November 8, 1943.

  “Harry visited us yesterday…” DAF, July 3, 1942.

  “We ping-pongers…” DAF, June 20, 1942.

  “She was vivacious…” Berryman, The Freedom of the Poet, 95.

  “Although it is fairly warm…” DAF, May 18, 1943.

  “If the conversation…” DAF, January 28, 1944.

  “daily timetable” DAF, August
9, 1943.

  “Following Daddy’s good example…” DAF, October 29, 1942.

  “She talks so unfeelingly…” Masotty, Tales from the Secret Annex, 162.

  “It isn’t sentimental nonsense…” DAF, May 11, 1944.

  “When he complained…” DAF, March 10, 1943.

  “Just as I shrink…” Van der Stroom, DAF, p. 77.

  “Presumably man…” DAF, June 15, 1944.

  “I was very unhappy again…”DAF DAF, December 29, 1943.

  “If I think…” DAF, March 7, 1944.

  “She quarrels…” DAF, June 16, 1944.

  “a very uncomplicated person…If anyone…” Schnabel, Anne Frank, A Portrait in Courage, 106.

  “way to express…” Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, 173.

  “The yells and screams…” DAF, October 29, 1943.

  “Mrs. Van Daan, the fatalist…” DAF, March 10, 1943.

  “It gave me a queer feeling…” DAF, January 6, 1944.

  “Otto and Edith’s decision…” Müller, Anne Frank, The Biography, 188.

  “sharing out…” DAF, May 6, 1944.

  “When he has ended…” DAF, December 22, 1942.

  “Not only did his hair…” DAF, December 22, 1943.

  “most hoity-toity…” DAF, February 14, 1944.

  “Dussel thinks…” DAF, July 23, 1943.

  “I think it’s so rotten…” DAF, March 20, 1944.

  “I don’t want to be in the least…” DAF, February 5, 1943.

  “The only things that go down…” DAF, August 9, 1943.

  “I would want to have the feeling…” DAF, March 20, 1944.