{"id":1307,"date":"2014-02-03T15:22:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T15:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanford.edu\/group\/bookclub\/cgi-bin\/wordpress\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2014-02-03T15:22:14","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T15:22:14","slug":"on-anne-frank-a-few-words-from-john-felstiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/?p=1307","title":{"rendered":"On Anne Frank: a few words from John Felstiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span><a href=\"http:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Anne-Frank.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1311\" title=\"Anne-Frank\" src=\"http:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Anne-Frank.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Anne-Frank.jpg 450w, https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Anne-Frank-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Anne-Frank-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a>Anne Frank: A bright Jewish girl born 1929 in Frankfurt; forced to move with her family in 1933 to Amsterdam, Netherlands; murdered by Nazism in 1945. Anne would have been no one at all if not for her consistent diary, written toward her \u201cKitty\u201d from 13 to 15. Her family\u2019s helper, Miep Gies, preserved <em>Anne\u2019s Diary of a Young Girl.<\/em> Once that was published, she became and still is the Holocaust adolescent, almost daily discovering everything from ruinous Nazis and ruined Jews to families, friends, boys, her body, and more: writing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Perhaps the simplest yet hardest question is this: Would you rather have Anne Frank\u2019s uniquely sad and heartening diary, reaching about 50 million readers, or would you rather have somewhere a fine person living her fine life? This question, if it is one, has much to do with Philip Roth\u2019s gripping book\u00a0<em>The Ghost Writer<\/em>\u2014not to mention his brilliant short story \u201cEli, The Fanatic,\u201d pulling Jewish identity against home in America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><a href=\"http:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/annefrank.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1317\" title=\"annefrank\" src=\"http:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/annefrank.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/annefrank.jpg 340w, https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/annefrank-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/annefrank-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><\/a>New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, in 1955, published\u00a0<em>The Family of Man<\/em>, pictures of humanity around the world. One double-page has 11 photos of mainly normal young handsome women. In the center of them is this: \u201c<em>I still believe that people are really good of heart.<\/em>\u00a0Anne Frank, Diary.\u201d Go to her diary, two weeks before it ends, and you\u2019ll see this teen-ager: \u201cIt\u2019s really a wonder that I haven\u2019t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yes I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good of heart<em>.<\/em>\u00a0I simply can\u2019t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too &#8230;\u201d Somewhat crushing the good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>After a Gestapo arrested Anne and her family in their two-year hiding place, they were sent to Holland\u2019s Westerbork camp, then Auschwitz-Birkenau, then Bergen-Belsen. There, broken, she tried to keep her sister alive. Margot died, then Anne.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>\u2013 John Felstiner<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anne Frank: A bright Jewish girl born 1929 in Frankfurt; forced to move with her family in 1933 to Amsterdam, Netherlands; murdered by Nazism in 1945. Anne would have been no one at all if not for her consistent diary, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/?p=1307\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}