Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, a gifted Jewish writer and diarist, never survived the Holocaust.
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For those who love books and reading, you might be interested to know that the New York Times Book Review section celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.
About 90 % of the books on my reading list are books I added after reading the Times Sunday Review of Books.
When did it all begin?
On October 10, 1896, the Times book review section was officially launched. It was originally published in the Saturday Review of Books and Art, based on the prevailing opinion that books should be treated as news. In 1911, it was moved to Sunday.
It wasn’t until August 9, 1942 that the Book Review section added a “Best Seller’s List.”
So, here we are, well into the 21st century and I wondered which books, reviewed by the New York Times, have weathered the test of time and are still relevant?
There are so many books that are so influential and are as relevant today as when they were first published.
One of the first books that sprang to mind was “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.
Jeffrey Shandler, professor in the department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University thinks that “without a doubt Anne Frank's diary is one of the most influential books of the 20th century, in part because it has become one of the most widely read books of any kind, translated into dozens of languages and published in many millions of copies since it first appeared in Dutch in 1947.”
“Those who read the whole diary,” Shandler explained, “can see that it is a more complex text than the most familiar phrases that have been plucked from it. The diary voices anxieties as well as hopes about the dire situation Anne and her fellow Jews were facing and also dwells on Anne's coming of age under extraordinary circumstances” For this reason, Shandler said, “it has been recognized as an important text of adolescent female writing.”
Anneliese Marie Frank, a girl of Jewish heritage, was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Her childhood took a drastic turn when she was about four years old.
In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis assumed power, Anne Frank, along with her elder sister, Margot, and their parents, Otto and Edith Frank, fled to Amsterdam. But when Nazi tanks stormed into the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and cruel anti-Jewish decrees were introduced, the Franks took refuge in Otto Frank’s office building. The Franks and four other Jews hid in a “secret annex,” (at Prinsengracht 263) which was a group of rooms at the top and back of a building that served as a warehouse and office for Frank’s Dutch-owned business. Otto Frank ran a pectin business. Pectin is a key ingredient for making jams, jellies, and other preserves.
During the day they had to be quiet, but later in the evening, they were free to roam around.
On her 13th birthday, Anne Frank was presented with a red-checkered diary by her father, which she affectionately called “Kitty,” her imaginary friend. Anne would write in the diary from July 5, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Three days later, the family was captured by the Nazis and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in Drente, in the north of Holland. Less than a month later, they were deported to Auschwitz, the primary Nazi death camp in Poland. Less than two months later, Anne (15 years old) and her sister Margot (18 years old) were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany. There, emaciated and malnourished, they died from typhus. Historians estimate Anne and her sister died sometime in the spring of 1945. A mere 6-7% of Jewish children survived the Holocaust, compared with 33% among adults. Margot and Anne Frank were among the 6 million Jewish people and 1.5 million children murdered by Nazis.
Of the eight people that hid in the ‘’secret annex,’’ Otto Frank was the only one who survived. He was one of about 7,500 liberated from Auschwitz, out of more than one million.
One of the few remaining relics of his family was his daughter Anne’s diary, which was given to him by Miep Gies, one of the helpers in the annex who helped hide eight individuals from the Nazis, including Otto Frank and his family. Gies had kept the diary in a desk drawer.
After removing some highly personal and embarrassing passages, Otto Frank sought out a publisher for the diary, On June 25, 1947, Anne Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in Dutch in a small edition of 3,036 copies.
After some modest success, Otto Frank successfully signed deals with publishers in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) and in France. Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in both German and French in 1950. The book wasn’t a best seller, but it did sell a respectable 4,600 first edition copies.
The real game changer for Anne Frank’s diary didn’t come until 1952, when the diary was published in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.”
American novelist Meyer Levin wrote a review of the book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review section on June 15, 1952. After the review, sales of Anne Frank’s Diary exploded. A second print run of 15,000 copies was issued, followed by a third of 45,000 copies. It wasn’t long before, millions had read “The Diary of Young Girl.”
In the review, Levin wrote: “her book is not a classic to be left on the library shelf. It is a warm and stirring confession, to be read over and over for insight and enjoyment.”
Describing the optimistic view Anne Frank held of the human race despite the torment and harsh conditions they were living under, Meyer went on to write “There is anguish in the thought of how much creative power, how much sheer beauty of living, was cut off through genocide. But through her diary Anne goes on living. This wise and wonderful young girl brings back a poignant delight in the infinite human spirit.”
Most surprising to any who read Meyer’s book review, is the understanding of how stylish Anne Frank’s writing was at such a tender age. “I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, If I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
And as if to portend her imminent death, Anne wrote: “I want to go on living even after my death.” …. “I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”
The central message Anne Frank wanted to communicate to all of us was “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
F.K Schoeman, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies and director of the Jewish Studies program at the University of South Carolina, describing the unconscionable hate and discrimination that existed in Anne Frank’s lifetime, says, “we are implicitly asked by her diary to be aware of what it means to live in a racist, hateful, antisemitic, misogynistic, unjust world for the victims of these wrong ideals.” “The "lesson," so to speak, of The Diary,” Schoeman continued. “lies beyond the last page of the diary: the fact that when we let democracy and justice slip through our fingers, an innocent 15-year-old girl (and 1.5 million more children like her) can be tortured and murdered while the world looks on without doing anything to help.”
“The Diary of a Young Girl” became so popular and so widely read after Meyer Levin’s book review, that a play about Anne Frank was written by the husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on October 5,1955 and continued through June 22, 1957, after 717 performances.
It was a smash success, winning a string of Tony awards, including Best Play, and Best Director (Garson Kanin). The play additionally received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with a 1956 New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play.
The play was then adapted for a motion picture, which premiered in 1959. The film didn’t match the blockbuster success of the Broadway play, but it did earn Hollywood actress Shelley Winters an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. “The Diary of Anne Frank” also took home Oscars for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Black-and-White).
Since Levin’s book review, along with the Broadway and film productions, the diary has been translated into some 70 languages and circulated in an estimated 30 million copies.
Today, there is a cottage industry of tributes to Anne Frank and her diary, which includes: other films and television programs, ballets, operas, musical productions, paintings, drawings, sculpture, popular books, postage stamps, commemorative coins, videotapes, CD-ROMS, and mountains more.
A sliding bookcase in the "secret annex" that concealed the entrance to the hiding place at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam
Photo Source: Anne Frank House, Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam
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In 1957, the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in (in the center of Amsterdam) was on the brink of being destroyed. But since there was so much fascination with Anne Frank, the house was preserved (with the “secret annex” intact) and opened as a museum on May 3, 1960.
In 2019, 1.3 million visitors paid a visit to the Anne Frank House, about 80,000 more than in 2018 and 40,000 more than in 2017 when the museum was renovated. According to a museum spokesperson, the number of visitors in 2020 was limited to 396,779, due to the COVID pandemic.
Asked whether the Diary of Anne Frank with its universal message of “courage” and “hope” in the face of danger still resonates today, Sara Sewell, Professor of History at Virginia Wesleyan University, thinks that the “diary had a tremendous impact on Holocaust Studies across the globe, particularly a generation or two ago. As the history of the Holocaust entered the US classroom, it was largely through Anne Frank, as she made this history accessible to millions of students who were also teenagers.”
As much as she praises Anne Frank’s diary for having such a profound impact on understanding the Holocaust, Sewell does point out a critical weakness of the Diary. The problem of “learning about the Holocaust through this text,” Sewell cautions, “is that it ends just as she began the most horrific phase of her persecution.” “In other words,” Sewell explained, “what people most need to know about the Holocaust (death camps and survival, death in camps) is not discussed, and therefore, readers have a skewed view of the Holocaust.”
It is rare, indeed, when a book review propels a book to such towering heights, but there’s no mistaking that Meyer Levin’s New York Times book review, written almost 70 years ago, helped immeasurably in making Anne Frank a household name, both here in the United States and around the globe.
---Bill Lucey
March 21, 2021
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