Guest Blogger: Eli Rubenstein
Anne Frank's short life came to a tragic end in the Nazi concentration
camp of Bergen Belsen some 70 years ago this month. This
article by Eli Rubenstein addresses her remarkable legacy and one
of her most famous - and perhaps controversial - quotes. The article, originally published in the Canadian Jewish News, can also be downloaded here:
http://marchoftheliving.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CJN-Perspectives-03-12-15b-Was-Anne-Frank-Right_-Final.pdf
Eli, who has been involved with Nishma for many years, is the
national director of March of the Living Canada, a program sponsored by
Jewish Federations of Canada and local Jewish UJA/CJA Federations. This piece is excerpted from Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations
,
to be published by Second Story Press, Fall 2015.
* * * * *
'People are really good at heart'
Seventy years after her death, it's time to ask: was Anne Frank right?
As we mark 70 years since the death of Anne Frank – in Bergen-Belsen
some time in March of 1945, just weeks before liberation – it is worth
recalling the dev-astating critique Cynthia Ozick wrote for the New
Yorker almost 20 years ago.
In her well known essay, Ozick actually suggested that it would have
been better if Anne Frank’s work had been burned, and never seen the
light of day
Yet, when one re-rereads her writing one can’t help but be amazed by the literary skill and idealism on display in
The Diary of a Young Girl, a work that has been translated into 67 languages and read by 30 million people.
Anne Frank was thinking and writ-ing about subjects that many –
myself included – would only begin to contem-plate much later in life,
and expressing herself in ways which most writers far be-yond her years
could only hope to aspire to. And this from a 14-year-old girl locked in
an attic for two years…
Here are just a few small examples
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go
out-side, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens,
nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should
be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of
nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know
that then there will always be comfort for every sor-row, whatever the
circumstances may be.”
“You can be lonely even when you are loved by many people, since you are still not anybody’s one and only.”
Perhaps her most famous quote is this one: “It’s really a wonder that
I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and
impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of
every-thing, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
So what disturbed Ozick so much?
Of course, Ozick was not criticizing Anne Frank but, rather, what had
become of her after her death – the way her story was diluted and
distorted – especially by the overuse and misuse of the “good at
heart” quote mentioned above.
Ozick argued that the Broadway play and film about Anne Frank removed
almost all references to Anne Frank’s Jewishness and the culpability of
the Germans, along with most expressions of pessimism and sadness
recorded in her diary, transforming her ultimately tragic story, into an
upbeat, redemptive tale of humour and hope.
Ozick was especially infuriated by the prevailing usage of the phrase
“people are really good at heart,” because it eclipsed many other
foreboding statements Anne makes in her diary. Most importantly, Oz-ick
felt that Anne’s betrayal, deportation to Auschwitz and death in
Bergen-Bel-sen, belie the sentiment that “people are really good at
heart.” In Ozick’s words, the damnable phrase is “torn from its bed of
thorns,” “pulls the wool over the eyes of history,” and obscures the
ultimate fate of the person who wrote it.
Perhaps camp survivor, Bruno Bettel-heim best summed up the challenge
to Anne Frank’s most famous line by re-sponding: “If all men are good
(at heart), there never was an Auschwitz.”
Indeed would Anne Frank have ever written these words in Auschwitz or
Bergen-Belsen? Would she have stuck by them had she survived?
So, then, how do we preserve in our young people the innocent belief
in the goodness of humanity, expressed by Anne Frank, when faced with
the grim reality of Auschwitz? Should we? Does the Holo-caust, in fact,
not teach us that humanity is inherently evil? And if we concur, are we
not, in a strange twist, proclaiming Hitler victorious? For, if humanity
is so utterly hopeless, so beyond salvation, why should we indeed care
one whit about each other?
Here, I believe, lies the answer to the divide between Anne Frank and
Cynthia Ozick/Bruno Bettelheim. Anne Frank was right – one may argue.
The majority of people are good at heart – but that is not nearly
enough. We must also act, stand up, make a difference. Otherwise we
become accomplices to the victimizers – and ultimately, the enablers of
Auschwitz.
This message, indeed, has much res-onance in Jewish thought, for, as
often noted, Judaism is a religion of “deed and not creed.” We care much
more about your actions, than about the interior landscape of your
thoughts and beliefs. Moral action is always to be preferred over pious
sentiment.
Indeed the Holocaust did not happen only because of its infinitely
evil perpe-trators – but because most of the world’s good people did not
stand up straight enough or soon enough.
Anne Frank died because not enough people who were “good at heart” mostly people like you and I acted upon their beliefs.
Perhaps Anne Frank’s words were more of a wish, a prayer, than a hard and fast statement about human nature.
It is up to us to not only fulfill Anne’s words, but to surpass them,
to not only be good at heart, but to act on those good intentions.
So that one day, no more precious children like Anne Frank and
millions of others, will have their pure and hope- filled ideals so
utterly betrayed, and left to a fate no child should ever suffer.
Kesher Israel E-Mail Update
An unfathomable tragedy occurred in Brooklyn, NY this past Shabbos. A
Jewish family's home caught fire, and seven wonderful children perished.
(An account of yesterday's heart-rending funerals can be read 