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| The Graphic Diary of Anne Frank (JTA) |
Nor should the suffering of the survivors during that period be minimized. Even if those survivors that were in hiding and avoided the camps. It was no picnic living in hiding; in constant fear of being discovered; and being shot immediately or sent off to a death camp
The trauma they suffered stayed with them the rest of their lives. Those survivors are holy. Even if they did not remain observant. Those that did remain observant had unfathomable faith in God that could not be extinguished no matter what kind of torture they endured.
But this is not about them. This is about one particular victim, a young girl who spent most of that period in hiding. Only to be discovered late in the war, and sent to the Bergen-Belsen death camp where she eventually got sick and died.
I am of course talking about Anne Frank. It was Anne Frank’s diary that her father, Otto Frank, found after returning to their hiding place and published in 1947 shortly after the war.
The Diary of Anne Frank was the first glimpse of what it was like to be a Jew in hiding during the Holocaust - seen through the eyes of an optimistic young teenager. A teenager of sweetness and innocence whose only ‘crime’ was being Jewish. A ‘sin’ she eventually paid for with her life.
Anne Frank was not the only victim. There were over 6 million victims. The obsession with her undermines what other victims endured. But more importantly it is not OK to use her unedited diary for ulterior motives of a left wing agenda. Which I believe was behind publishing the parts of her diary her father left out. From JTA:
The graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, published in English in 2018, has found itself at the center of a growing number of controversies involving book removals from school libraries. A small number of passionate activists have pushed for the book to be removed from schools in Florida and Texas, calling it “pornography” and even “antisemitic.”
In my view attempts to ban that version from school libraries is not only legitimate, it is laudable. I’m not sure I would go so far as to say it is pornographic. But Anne’s graphic descriptions of her female genitalia and curiosity about her own sexuality is certainly inappropriate reading for elementary school children. Or even high school for that matter. Does anyone really believe that a 14 year old ninth grader is mature enough to read a book like that? Unless you believe that any discussion of anything to do with sex is OK at any age.
I am not one of those. But it appears that many people are. They consider it perfectly harmless They have the right to feel that way. But they do not have the right to force their views upon people like me and insist that those books be made available at will to any student who chooses to take it off the shelves of their school library.
Parents have the right to make those decisions for themselves based on their own personal convictions. And they have the right to make sure that books like that not be made easily available to their children in a public school system that caters to all of us. I call it responsible parenting. It is certainly not Holocaust denial. Especially if the original edited version of the book is made available - as it should be.
To be absolutely clear, I do not fault for a split second anything Anne wrote in her personal diary. My problem is with people who call banning such books antisemitic.
Including Anne’s most intimate thoughts is surely not anything she would have wanted to make public. In many ways publishing that book is an assault on her memory. It serves no purpose. It does nothing to advance the lessons of the Holocaust. In that sense publishing and widely distributing the unedited version does a disservice to Anne Frank and the memory of the Holocaust. By including those portioins of her diary, it alters the focus of the book to include sexual issues unrelated to the Holocaust
That is the opposite of those who claim banning it is in some way Holocaust denial. It is not Holocaust denial. It’s good parenting by people that are guided by their moral principles.
Besides, does anyone really think that no books should ever be banned no matter the content? Even to young children? My own state of Illinois just passed legislation that would hold back funding for school that ban any books from their libraries.
Really? What about a book about the joys of child sex abuse that includes child pornography? Is that OK? Or should that kind of book be banned? If the answer to the last question is yes, then we are no longer talking about not banning any books. We are just talking about where to draw the line.
To be absolutely clear, I do not fault for a split second anything Anne wrote in her personal diary. My problem is with people who call banning such books antisemitic. I’m sure that Anne Frank never wanted her innermost thoughts to ever see the light of day. Let alone be published for the entire world to see. I’m sure her father thought the same thing or he would not have edited those thoughts out.
I am so sick of people using the Holocaust to advance their own agenda. Because that is all this really is. And I am sick of a mainstream media that seems to be supportive of them. That is NOT OK. If anything it smacks of a certain degree of antisemitism. Even if it is unconscious and unintended.
