Every young woman remembers the first time she read "The Diary of Anne Frank". We all feel that we personally know Anne. Those huge brown eyes look out at us from the picture on her book saying...hey, I'm just like you! I laugh, I cry, I get upset with my annoying mother, I like a boy...all the things that every thirteen year old girl feels, Anne does as well. Except Anne does it in a cramped hiding place, where to even walk across the room during the daylight hours is fraught with danger. Just because she is a Jew.
We also know the end of Anne's story before we read the diary. We know Anne does not survive. We know that only her beloved father returns to the hiding place above his business in Amsterdam, Holland, where he picks up the pieces of his own life and endures, and then triumphs as a Jew, and as a father, by giving the world the gift of his daughter's words.
A new book, "Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife" was written by Francine Prose in 2009. For me, who began reading about the Holocaust around the time I was Anne Frank's age, this book offered new insights. And, when read along with the astounding 2008 book by Nicholson Baker, "Human Smoke", more questions than answers are found.
The story of World War II is not the story of bombs, battles, and strategy, but the story of human lives. Who lives, who dies? A man dives into his foxhole just before machine gun fire hits where he had just stood. He lives. His pal turns an ankle and misses the foxhole by an inch. He dies. A concentration camp victim gets a bite of soup, just one bite, the day before liberation. She lives. Her bunk mate is too weak that day to swallow the soup. She dies. War is deliberate, of course. But the deaths can be so random.
Anne Frank's paternal grandfather founded the Michael Frank bank in Frankfurt, Germany, where Anne's father, Otto, was born and raised. Otto came to the United States and lived for two years, before World War I, with a friend from school whose family just happened to own Macy's. Like all good Germans, Otto Frank fought for his country in World War I. In 1933, far earlier than most Jews felt it necessary to leave Germany, Otto Frank moved his family to Holland. In 1938, two of Anne's uncles were able to emigrate to the United States.
The Dutch tried to remain neutral, but Germany overpowered them. Even so, the Dutch people never completely gave up, as other Europeans did. Many wore the yellow Star of David, in solidarity with the Jews, but again, the force of the Nazis overcame the Dutch. Still, as we know from Anne's story and others, many Dutch people demonstrated remarkable courage and hid Jews. Otto Frank had planned well. The family was about to go into the annex to hide when Anne's older sister, Margot, was ordered to report to a camp. This put the entire plan on the fast track, and the Franks moved into their hiding place in July, 1942. They remained hidden for the next two years and one month. On August 4, 1944, they were taken to concentration camps, where all but Otto Frank were murdered by the Nazis. All who read the diary are in anguish once they learn that Ann and Margot died amid the horrors of Bergen-Belsen merely weeks prior to the British liberation. What would it have taken for Anne Frank to survive a matter of weeks? One more more crust of bread? A different temperature outside? Less rain?
Of course, there was one way that Anne Frank and thousands like her could have lived. Otto Frank knew very well what that was, and he tried his best to save his family. In 1938, before the war began, Otto Frank tried to get permission to bring his family to the United States. In 1941, Otto began to ask for help from his friend, Mr. Strauss, the owner of Macy's. Anne's uncles, already settled in the United States, promised to pay for the boat passage and sponsor the family in America. Where was the harm to this country? Otto Frank had lived in the United States for two years. He was a husband and a loving father of two girls. He spoke more than one language and had built a successful business in a new country. But the United States said no. The words on the Statue of Liberty say,..."give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free....". But we said no to the Frank family.
"Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization" by Nicholson Baker is not like any other history book I have read. It has received plenty of negative press, mostly due to its negative portrayals of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. One Roosevelt anecdote has the future president worried that the freshman class of Harvard Law School is comprised of 25% Jews...he helps suggest a way to get that number down to 15%. Throughout the 30's and 40's, as the Jews are targeted, stolen from, moved, bullied, denied basic freedoms, and finally killed, the United States continued to deny entrance to most Jews begging to come. Our quota system could not, or would not, be changed.
When I visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam I was able, for a few moments, to stand absolutely alone in her room. Anne's pictures of American movie stars are still on the wall. Anne loved those Americans. But America said no to Anne.
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