Anne Frank’s 80th Birthday

I’ve written two posts about Anne Frank on this blog but I can’t not comment today on what would have been her 80th birthday. It’s hard to imagine that young girl we all know being 80 years old, but on the other hand, having just attended Betty Garrett’s 90th birthday party and knowing a bunch of thriving people over 80 who seem so young, it’s also hard to believe that she’d ONLY be 80 this many years after she died.

Here are some quotations from Anne’s writing that particularly resonate with me today:

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be. How much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is.

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death…I think peace and tranquility will return again.

Parents can only give good advice or put children on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

In Anne Frank’s day, children like Charlie, babies with brain issues, would have been killed at birth. Among the very first to die under Nazi rule were mentally handicapped infants and children up to the age of three. That age was later extended to 16. First, they cleared out the institutions and then went looking for mentally challenged children in German citizens’ homes, taking them away under the pretense that they needed some kind of surgery and then either starving them or poisoning them with lethal tea and cremating the bodies. By 1941, over 5,000 children were dead.

Later, as part of their plan to secure the "Master Race," the Nazis rounded up older children and adults who were retarded, epileptic, deaf, or paralyzed. They put them in buses with blacked-out windows and rode them to one of six centers where they were killed in gas chambers. At the Nuremberg Trials, the nurses involved in the program claimed that they didn’t like the procedures but they honestly thought they were relieving the “patients” of suffering. By 1945, the Nazis had killed over 200,000 people in their euthanasia program.

Of course, being Jewish, my family would have already been on a cattle car to a concentration camp, there would have been no need to check our medical records. Oy, another happy-go-lucky post, huh? Sorry, Anne, I meant to celebrate your too-short life and the tremendous contributions you've made to the world, especially among children. I look forward to introducing Charlie to “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a book Leah loves. Years ago she played Otto Frank in a production of the play that constantly moved me to tears.

On Anne Frank’s birthday I always wonder what she would have accomplished over the years had she lived. I think it's likely she would have been a writer and with her obsession of Hollywood, who knows—maybe she'd be living  not far from us in Los Angeles.

I will never forget the time I got to spend alone in the Franks’ attic in Amsterdam when I was working with the Anne Frank Center on an educational video about Anne Frank’s legacy. I felt Anne’s energy in those rooms on that day in the early 1980s and I feel it today on her 80th birthday.

Fijne Verjaardag, Anneliese!

Comments

[Cynthia Reich]

Oh Danny,

What a beautiful tribute!

My grandmother and parents used to sing Oyf'n Pripetchok. So, if I wasn't already farklempt enough, that did it.

Love,
Cynthia

[G]

Thank you for reminding us. My dad, a survivor, turns 80 next year. Because Anne Frank's youth is so engrained in my mind, this was an epiphany to me: I always knew my Dad was young in the camps, but he was younger than Anne Frank-wow.

[Shari]

I'm always amazed at the wisdom in her words, especially at such a young age.

[Pam G]

I read earlier this week that Anne Frank's original diaries will now go on display in the Amsterdam attic/museum that, until recently, displayed copies of her work.

Anne's maturity and enthusiasm for life always impressed me during my own dismal teen years. Had she survived the war, she would actually be just about one year younger than my own mother, who is still with us today.

I, too, often wondered sadly what Anne would have done after the war. Surely something spectacular with her writing ability. Yet her amazing energy remains with us all some 60 years after her death.

I understand that Miep Geis is still alive and recently celebrated her 100th birthday. She says she would have destroyed Anne's diaries, had she read them, before turning them over to Otto Frank at the end of the war. She says they contained too much "incriminating information" and that the published versions were highly "sanitized." Thus I gather Anne was an excellent and sensitive observer and perhaps one may now view portions of what she actually wrote in her own words. Such a legacy . . .

[margalit]

Danny, such a lovely tribute. The Amsterdam House is the only place I've ever completely broken down. It was just too sad. Too horribly horribly sad.

Do you know the name of the Kinderlachen song at the end of the post. My mother used to sing it to me, and I know it was on Mandy Patemkin's Yiddish CD, but my children lost that and I'm back to square one.

[Judy]

Anne Frank made me want to write, i started a diary after reading her book. Truly a role model for the ages..wanting to "believe that people are good at heart" was my favorite quote and I tried to live it. I married a child of survivors, his mother, An Austrian, was sent to Ravensbruck. It's hard to grow up without aunts or uncles, or grandparents. Our children have hardly any relatives, only one 2nd cousin on his side, and i only have one sister but many more aunts and uncles. They were mostly dead by the time my kids grew. So the losses of the Holocaust live on as do the successful families being born every day which are antidotes to these losses. This gives me hope that we will survive. I like to think that we, the latter generations who become her readers keep her spirit alive.
Keep on keeping on this great blog, Danny. You never fail to make me think anew.

[Julie R.]

You have so much knowledge and insight to share. Thanks for the post.

[La Framércaine]

Dear Danny,

I am not Jewish, nor anything else for that matter, but I have Anne Frank's diary in English and French and always offer it to anyone that I am attempting to influence into taking up the habit of keeping a personal journal. If it is an important work for me, it must be a monumentally important work for your Jewish readers--as evidenced by their comments. Thank you for having put Anne's birthday in high relief. I too find it difficult to believe that she would only have been 80. Believe it or not, her experience living in hiding has always had a profound influence on my attitude about what constitutes "enough" in a home and informs a certain resistance I have to living in spaces in a conventional way.

Be well,

[Pearl]

A few years ago, Toronto hosted an exhibit of Anne's diary and some of her personal photos, home movies and writings. I took my two oldest children, who were in grades 4 and grade 2 at the time, to see the exhibit with me. I was pleased they didn't rush through, but studied each photo, asked questions, made comments, etc.

Since I was a young girl, I've known about Anne Frank; every Jew and non-Jew should read her diary and know her story, too.

Thank you for remembering her special day, Danny. My favorite Anne quote is "...in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." I wish we could witness that as truth...

[anonymous]

I have also stood in that attic and felt that energy, many years ago when I was in college in England and went to Amsterdam for a weekend trip. When I look at my 3 year old son and 5 year old daughter I can't even imagine the horror parents felt at having their children torn from them. It terrifies me whenever I think about it and it terrifies me and deeply saddens me that it continues to happen around the world today.

[Debbie Rose Galo]

hi danny
my daughter was just there at the end of april. she too felt the energy and said how the world should never forget
thanks for all your posts.

[churlita]

I loved Anne Frank when I was a girl. I was living in an abusive situation with my legal guardians, and her writing gave me much needed strength.

As an adult, I still can't believe how wise she was. I hope she helps Charlie through any trying times he might have.

[miguel]

I particulaly lik the movie,the diary of anne frank because it portrays the story of a family of jews fron being abused by the racism of hitler the dark devil white