Named and Inhabited Evil

Someone posted on Facebook this article from November 2015, making the parallels between the current refugee crisis and the plight of Anne Frank and her family. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, began exploring options and seeking visas to come to the United States (and Cuba) just as those visas were becoming increasingly impossible to get. Now that Trump has announced his intentions to cut the admittance of refugees even further, the parallel becomes even more painful and apt.

Twenty years ago, in a devastating piece for The New Yorker, Cynthia Ozick wrote about what a literary masterpiece Anne Frank’s diary is, and how it has been distended and distorted by all manner of humanitarian and high school tripe, such that we no longer have access to the disruption and severity of the original.

I thought of Ozick’s last words this morning:

On Friday, August 4, 1944, the day of the arrest, Miep Gies climbed the stairs to the hiding place and found it ransacked and wrecked. The beleaguered little ban had been betrayed by an informer who was paid seven and a half guilders—about a dollar—for each person: sixty guilders for the lot. Miep Gies picked up what she recognized as Anne’s papers and put them away, unread, in her desk drawer. There the diary lay untouched, until Otto Frank emerged alive from Auschwitz. “Had I read it,” she said afterward, “I would have had to burn the diary because it would have been too dangerous for people about whom Anne had written.” It was Miep Gies—the uncommon heroine of this story, a woman profoundly good, a failed savior—who succeeded in rescuing an irreplaceable masterwork. It may be shocking to think this (I am shocked as I think it), but one can imagine a still more salvational outcome: Anne Frank’s diary burned, vanished, lost—saved from a world that made of it all things, some of them true, while floating lightly over the heavier truth of named and inhabited evil.

8 Comments

  1. David Egan January 27, 2017 at 10:26 am | #

    The Diary of Ann Frank published today is an edited version with sections expunged while others added by a ghost writer. As such, the work does not comply as an historic document. and while , meaningful in many ways, ultimately distorts the original view of a very honest, tragic young girl.

    • Philippa Burton January 27, 2017 at 10:54 am | #

      Indeed. Ann Frank wrote and re-wrote (parts of) her diary and the published version is an amalgamation of different parts. Also, and only for the record (as not relevant to Robin’s main points), the newest research of the Ann Frank Foundation, from Dec 2016, seems raises the possibility that the group was not betrayed (for money). The new theory is that the police raid might have been focussed on a clandestine coupons operation carried out by another business in the same building, Gies & Co, and that the Franks and their fellows in hiding were only discovered by accident. Ann Frank writes in her diary, from 10 March 1944 on, about the arrest of two people (D. and B.) involved in this clandestine distribution of coupons, and their later release. This would explain why the police raid took two hours (which is seen as very long for picking up people known to live in a particular place), why other inhabitants of the building were allowed to come and go during the raid and so on. And there are (other) known instances of Jews in hiding having been found by accident during police raids of a different nature.

    • Beth S. January 27, 2017 at 2:11 pm | #

      To clarify, there was no ghost writer of Anne Frank’s diary. The words that exist in publication are 100% hers, although translations may vary ever so slightly. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation produced a report on the authenticity of the diary many years ago, to refute such claims as yours. None of the diary was fabricated.

      Otto Frank was responsible for editing the original published edition of the diary, and in doing so, he combined different versions that Anne herself had written, and removed some passages–notably those where she did not speak so highly of her mother, and those that referenced her developing sexuality. When the Definitive Edition of the diary was published in the 1990s, another editor, Mirjam Pressler, restored those passages that had once been cut. The Definitive Edition is still available in mass market paperback (https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Young-Girl-Publisher-Definitive/dp/B004MSWLU8/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485543472&sr=1-3&keywords=anne+frank+the+diary+of+a+young+girl+definitive+edition), and like the original Diary of a Young Girl, contains only text written by Anne herself.

      To clarify, there was no ghost writer of Anne Frank’s diary. The words that exist in publication are 100% hers, although translations may vary ever so slightly. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation produced a report on the authenticity of the diary many years ago, to refute such claims as yours. None of the diary was fabricated.

      Otto Frank was responsible for editing the original published edition of the diary, and in doing so, he combined different versions that Anne herself had written, and removed some passages–notably those where she did not speak so highly of her mother, and those that referenced her developing sexuality. When the Definitive Edition of the diary was published in the 1990s, another editor, Mirjam Pressler, restored those passages that had once been cut. The Definitive Edition is still available in mass market paperback (https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Young-Girl-Publisher-Definitive/dp/B004MSWLU8/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485543472&sr=1-3&keywords=anne+frank+the+diary+of+a+young+girl+definitive+edition), and like the original Diary of a Young Girl, contains only text written by Anne herself.

      There are multiple versions of Anne’s diary because in March 1944, she heard a Dutch radio broadcast that announced that diaries from the war would be published after the war. This news inspired her to go back and edit her diary to prepare it for publication. She re-wrote most of her diary up until the time of her arrest in August, 1944. Although Miep Gies was able to save Anne’s writings, some of Anne’s rewrites were lost. When Otto first had the diary published, he combined some of her original writing with some of her edited version to produce the published version we all know of today. Though he was editor and compiled her writings, he did not rewrite any of her diary. The Critical Edition of the diary pairs all three versions of the diary (Anne’s original, her rewrites, and the published version) side by side, and also contains the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation’s report on the diary’s authenticity.

      For further reading, visit The Anne Frank House’s official page at: http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Frank/Publication-of-the-diary/The-different-versions-of-Annes-diary/ or this more detailed article here: http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Frank/A-diary-as-a-best-friend/At-last-seriously-taken-as-a-writer/.

  2. David Egan January 27, 2017 at 4:14 pm | #

    Phillipa Burton, I refer you to the New York Supreme Court case in early 60s awarding Jewish author Meyer Levin $50,000.00 for substantial re-writing of Ann Frank’s original diary for publication. He sued Ann’s father Otto and settled for his contributions to the diary. This fact alone invalidates any such description of the diary as a “masterpiece”. In fact, it is not even an original bit of writing.

    • Beth S. January 27, 2017 at 4:30 pm | #

      You have misconstrued the facts. The settlement with Meyer Levin was over the rights to adapting the diary into a play. The published diary was 100% Anne’s words. Meyer Levin wrote favorably of the diary in the New York Times after its US publication in 1952, which then propelled the diary into popularity in the United States. He was also a playwright, and had been working with Otto Frank to adapt the diary into a play. However, there ended up being a feud between Levin and Otto Frank over Levin’s interpretation. Levin was dropped from the project, hence the settlement. It had nothing to do with the diary itself.

      • David Egan January 27, 2017 at 6:40 pm | #

        Thanks for this clarification. Can you supply links to this new ( for me, at least) information?
        Thanks, again, for your timely response!

  3. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant January 31, 2017 at 10:28 am | #

    I am inclined to suspect that Ms. Ozick may be deeply offended by your willingness to invoke the plight of the Frank family in its efforts to seek visas to escape the Nazis, in order to observe a parallel for those refugees seeking escape from wars and human rights violations only to find Trump’s recent executive order standing athwart them.

    A reminder: https://coreyrobin.com/2014/10/06/cynthia-ozick-and-the-palestinians/

    She claims that Trump is “inconceivable”, but since the Democrats won’t support Israel and the Republicans will, she’ll take Trump: “If the Democrats are going to abandon Israel, I say the hell with them. Of course it’s not all of them, but as a party, we’ll see. Because I guess they’ll win. Trump is simply inconceivable. But the Republicans are not inconceivable concerning their support of Israel, and that matters to me.”

    From: http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/cynthia-ozick-wants-to-make-a-few-distinctions.html

    Like Trump and Bannon, Ms. Ozick believes that only some of us are human.

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