What Does Anne Frank Mean?
I used to know what Anne Frank stood for but the reputation of the teenage diarist has evolved to the point where she might no longer mean anything at all.
Over a dozen years ago, Nathan Englander published a short story in The New Yorker called, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. The story follows two couples, one Orthodox, one secular, who get high and drunk and end up talking about who would save them should a second Holocaust hit.
The story immediately spoke to me. Growing up amongst Holocaust survivors, I’m intimately aware of the “who will hide me” question. And while I can’t say with authority that I played this game with friends as a child, I can certainly admit that I’ve thought about it more than once.
The short story — which has since been developed into a successful play — raises some interesting questions about Jewish identity and inter-generational trauma. But it ran on the assumption that Anne Frank was a quintessentially Jewish story of perseverance under the threat of death. It also assumed the continuous existence of “righteous” people (i.e. gentiles) who will fight for your survival.
But for the coming generations of readers, Jewish and otherwise, the touchstone that is Anne Frank will likely mean something completely different, if it means anything at all.
What We Think of When We Think of Anne Frank?
Many words have already been written about the enduring symbolism of Anne Frank. I highly recommend People Love Dead Jews by
or at the very least, her essay Becoming Anne Frank. Also, ’s new book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank. Both eloquently observe how Anne Frank has morphed into a sanitized meme of perfect victimhood.But the world has changed considerably in the last two years. October 7th and the subsequent war in Gaza has altered the Holocaust narrative in popular culture. Then, the return of Trump to the White House moved the needle on what we consider Nazi and Hitler. A few years ago, who would have imagined that people in the streets would be supporting the Iranian regime? Throughout these last few years, Holocaust imagery has been used and abused for competing purposes. After the attack on Iran, Turkish President described Netanyahu as “worse than Hitler.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu called Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a “modern Hitler” and Iran’s nuclear scientists, Hitler’s nuclear team.
Enter Anne Frank, an angelic victim of genocidal aggression whose Jewishness has been downplayed for years. While that universality of Anne’s experience was likely started by her father, it only became more pronounced over the decades. (Dara Horn uses a great anecdote in her essay about a young employee at the Anne Frank Museum who was asked not to wear a kippah in an effort to keep the museum neutral.)
Combine that universality with a dwindling knowledge of Holocaust facts, and voila, you have an Anne Frank that means something very different that she did even 12 years ago, when Englander published his story. But what if we no longer have the sanitized Anne Frank? What if, given current events, she evolves into a side-switching revolutionary?
For example, in one of the many slideshows featuring the best of the “No Kings” protest signs, one advertised that Republicans would “rat out Anne Frank.”
Then, in the comment section of a Wonkette story on a Walmart heiress supporting the No Kings protest, one reader suggested that Anne Frank would recognize the fascist elements of the Trump era more than anyone.
Never mind WWJD (what would Jesus do?) — it’s WWAFD?
Everyone Loves Anne Frank (And Apparently, She Loved Everyone, Too.)
In many ways, Anne Frank’s youth offers us a blank slate. She can be whomever we want her to be. In a less fraught example, a discussion point about Anne Frank’s sexuality that has been around for years has very recently bubbled up and exploded.
This all stems from a reference in the diary where Anne Frank talks about her attraction to boys but also to her best friend, Jacqueline. She once asked if they could touch each other’s breasts. Jacqueline refused.
Was Anne Frank bi? No one knows. She didn’t live long enough to explore her sexuality. The question that comes up for me is what sparked Pink News into running this story right now, creating a tempest in a tea cup? Maybe, in this current climate, being Anne Frank means being on the right side of history. Maybe she can be bi, democratic, fill-in-the-blank. But my one fear about human deities, is that they don’t remain deities forever.
Everyone Hates Anne Frank
Well, not exactly — at least not yet. But many are annoyed. Other than Anne Frank’s supposed universality, it’s the unwavering optimism that irks people the most. According to the famous diarist herself, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” It’s her most famous line, that graces everything from film posters to coffee mugs.
A few years ago, the Forward ran an opinion piece by Rabbi Philip Graubart, a director of the Advanced Institute for Judaic Studies at the San Diego Jewish Academy, where he recounted the story of a survivor who knew Anne Frank and found her insufferable.
“‘I know in my heart that people are good.’ That was from her diary, yes? People are good? Do you think she believed that in Bergen-Belsen?’” he quoted her as saying.
So what is Anne Frank? Many authors (including those listed above) have carefully pieced together the girl, but what about the myth?
Anne Frank allows us to see the world in black and white. Holocaust analogies are particularly good at doing that. Hitler = bad. Nazis = bad. Anne Frank = good. That may work on the surface, when we can agree what is good and bad (as most of us can with the Holocaust), but in modern day parlance, it’s hard to keep track of who we are calling Hitler today. It may be equally troubling to know whom we are calling Anne. The tables keep turning.
So what do we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank? That’s no longer an easy question to answer. Like many Holocaust analogies, she’s been altered and weaponized to the point where she might no longer be recognizable. Let’s hope that’s the worst of it.
Anne Frank in a keffiyeh appeared, first in graffiti form in a city in Norway. Image via Times of Israel
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Unfortunately, Anne Frank no longer belongs to the Jews. She is a symbol who can morph into any cause. Like the Holocaust itself, and even the word "genocide" these days, appropriating our pain, or making it universal, is a new form of antisemitism. The thing is, I'm not entirely certain Anne Frank would have objected. She was nothing if not a creative thinker and an optimist. Had she lived through the Holocaust, would she have come out of it still believing that "people are really good at heart"? We'll never know.
I'm not a Jew. However, I have never understood this us-vs-them mentality that continues. I've read her Diary twice and have visited her house. But a thought occurred to me. It is a troubling thought--not only because I dare think it at all--but because I fear a hostile response. As a Catholic, I have come up against sacrosanct writing with serious doubts and been shouted down, rebuked, and even lost friends over it.
And then I think of the good this work has done. How it sealed an entire mindset in the immediate post-war guiltscape that engendered "Never again!"
Of course "Never again!" This is such an important--even crucial--slogan that defines humanity and how we're better than that. We must be! (Even invoking the sentiment of "How could we have ever!")
But some did. And, worse, it seems that even those who know history are doomed to repeat it anyway. Maybe even soon.
So, back to Anne Frank. I have to admit I find it a bit mysterious that the Nazis secured the Frank living quarters after their removal and, their being propaganda hounds, it seems unlikely that they'd miss a diary lying on the floor. An actual journal. As I understand it, that is where her uncle found it some time later. Perhaps so. I also know that heartstrings are a terrible thing to waste, especially after the size of the heartbreak that comes with genocide. The holocaust was such a scourge on our legacy that anything probably was fair in hedging the bets against it happening ever again. But...
Could the diary have been fabricated? The world was reeling from the holocaust and politics of homelands and other safeguards were in the works. The timing was perfect.
Now I know her diary has been carefully and expertly studied, even forensically. Hand-writing experts have probably weighed in as to its authenticity; I don't know. I only read it and didn't study it or the extended history around it. But I have thought about it immensely and on many levels. I'm a boomer, so when I was growing up, WWII and the holocaust were still fresh sensibilities. But if it had been fabricated, or at the least altered in such a way to push the humanism that begs "Never again!", would that have been a bad thing? That's not politics.
Not to me.
"Never again" is not a political promise. It's a human mandate.
Do I really think Anne Frank's diary was fabricated? Well, actually, no. So before I get responses of "Ridiculous!", "Idiot!", or "Antisemitic!", know that I DO believe it to be because of the authentic coming-of-age angst strewn throughout. It would be too genius to fabricate such authenticity. Yet, it's also a human voice that is heard loud and clear. It is the truth, no matter what the source, right? And its young-girl innocence only heightens the messages between the lines.
"Suffer the children," Christ allegedly said. (There I go again!) Why? Because innocence is what we're born with and it's a great gift. It invites wonder, another great gift. If a young girl cannot understand what happened to her, how can any deity? How can our humanity?