The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the best-known books in the world. To this day it is recommended reading in many high schools (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) as part of Holocaust education programs. Considering the vast amount of material available on this subject, why is this book still so popular? How does it still awaken interest among teenagers? What is its special contribution to the teaching of the Holocaust?
Despite being written nearly 80 years ago, The Diary of Anne Frank continues to engage new readers. Much has been said about the literary ability of the author, but the extent to which today’s youth identify with an adolescent who describes her gloomy day-to-day existence inside a hidden annex, in the heart of Amsterdam dominated by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944, is still astonishing. Perhaps the secret lies in a combination of Anne’s candid description of her daily routine, the suffering caused by the war, and the conflicts generated by the intense promixity shared by the inhabitants of the annex; the way she spares no-one criticism, herself included; and of course her awakening curiosity with regard to sexuality. When the subject involves adolescents, an identification is created that crosses the barriers of time and context, helping contemporary youth to perceive the given reality with the eyes of an equal, an “imaginary sister” (Lafon), as many youngsters tend to fantasize.
Identification is a fundamental goal in Holocaust education, and thus personification is a key strategy in conveying the historical information. Whereas for many years the Holocaust was taught using inconceivable numbers and terrifying images of unidentified bodies, this pedagogy has undergone change, with an awareness of the importance of attributing names to people, relating their personal stories, and thereby arousing a greater level of identification. According to Carlos Reiss, general coordinator of the Museum of the Holocaust in Curitiba, there occurred a “change in paradigm from the ‘statistical’ and massified towards an attachment to the ‘name’ and towards the ‘individual’.” Besides respecting the dignity of the victims, knowing their history sensitizes us as observers, precisely because we will identify with some aspect of their lives. Primo Levi wrote that a single Anne Frank generates more emotion than an infinite number that suffered along with her, but whose images remain in the shadows.
What is the goal of showing terrible images of bodies thrown into ditches, people who are starving, faces deprived of expression, undifferentiated piles of shoes and personal objects? This spectacularization of the Holocaust shocks and silences. Its effect is to paralyze and to cause the observer to avert his gaze. Another mistake is to associate the perpetrators with monsters and to treat the Holocaust as something irrational, inexplicable and other-worldly. Because, after all, we can only prevent something similar happening again if we understand what led to this genocide, the stages of this process. Yehuda Bauer, a leading scholar of the Holocaust, used to say that to treat this historical episode as something inexplicable and mysterious results in converting the criminals “into tragic victims of forces that transcend human control. To say that the Holocaust is inexplicable, is to justify it.” If we want our students to study, learn and commit themselves to this memory, we have to understand the Holocaust as a human act, perpetrated by people who, within a given context, were capable of committing the worst atrocities.
It is interesting to note how Anne Frank understood that the war and its horrors were carried out by human beings. She went even further, pointing out that the responsibility for the tragedy also belonged to the “bystanders”, the observers – meaning those who were neither victims nor perpetrators (a perception echoed in Levi’s “doctrine of contempt”). Two years in advance she already perceived the dark forces in the human psyche that would lead to the concentration camps and gas chambers.
“I don’t believe that the big men, the politicans and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.
Anne Frank was a girl who dreamed, who had desires, who wanted to be with her friends, live new experiences and, above all, to grow up in freedom. Her anguish at living under the terror of the proximity of death, unable even to look out of a window, is heartbreaking. Despite the fact that the context of the Holocaust is specific and brutal, we know that, unfortunately there is no place free of prejudice and discrimination. The antisemitism we read about in Anne Frank’s diary reverberates in the present and in the violence that seizes contemporary society. It’s never only about the past. Studying the Holocaust by reading Anne Frank’s diary and other testimonials is a way of looking at today, and at humanity in its entirety. We have to prevent similar episodes from taking place. As Bauer maintains, we have to understand the Holocaust, in order that it be a warning, and not a precedent.
In the diary, Anne sets forth the restrictions and the gradual discrimination suffered by the Jews. We see how these conditions determine the manner in which she will live and die. On June 20, 1942, Anne describes how the persecution began in Holland.
“After May, 1940, goo times rapidly fled: first the war, then the capitulation, followed by the arrival of the Germans. That is when the sufferings of us Jews really began. Anti-Jewish decrees followed each other in quick succession…
While the diary is tense and includes several passages that convey pain, anguish, and suffering, Lafon points out how several editions have manipulated certain aspects, and criticizes the erroneous and dishonest way in which Anne Frank has often been depicted in movies and in the theatre. There is an important warning here. With every reading we grant new meaning to Anne Frank’s experience, but we may not impose new meanings, decontextualize her history, or ignore her words. We will never be able to imagine what she went through, even when reading the diary, researching her history, and visiting the annex where she hid in Amsterdam. The account will always have something unimaginable. Agamben calls this the Auschwitz paradox:
“On the one hand, what happened in the camps appears to the survivors as the only reality and, as such, is absolutely unforgettable; on the other hand such reality is, exactly in the same measure, unimaginable, or rather necessarily exceeds its factual elements.”
Lafon describes a conversation with a survivor, in which she declares that she has no words to describe what she went through, and that it is impossible to imagine. Lafon comments that one can really not imagine, but even so, “it is necessary to try to imagine.” In short, this unimaginable reality cannot be ignored, it has to be sought tirelessly, for it is this search that humanizes us and brings us closer to the other; it is the place where we ought to be. Imagining Anne Frank’s solitude, her fears, her despair, is what the diary invites us to do. More difficult - but unavoidable - is imagining her end, which leaves an emptiness, an absence, a tormenting silence. This reading compels us to rethink our presumed position as observers - yesterday, today, and always - because for anyone living within society, there is no way of evading all responsibility with regards to others.
Paulo, the coordinator of the Judaic Studies department at Eliezer Max School in Brazil, graduated with honors (magna cum laude) from the International Master’s Program at the Melton Centre.
Bibliography:
Agamben, Giorgio. O que resta de Auschwitz: o arquivo e a testemunha.
Bauer, Yehuda. Reflexiones sobre el Holocausto.
Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank.
Levi, Primo. Afogados e Sobreviventes: os delitos, os castigos, as penas.
Reiss, Carlos. Luz sobre o caos: Educação e memória do holocausto.