Most of them lived in Poland and wrote about their lives before the war with intimacy and candor as part of a contest sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. That is why I became totally fascinated by a collection of hundreds of autobiographies written by Jewish youth in the 1930s. (I, like you, had learned all about the atrocities of the ghettos and concentration camps, and I had the nightmares to match.) I was much more interested in how they lived.
#City of secrets and dreams book full#
They had full lives before World War II, and those who were teenagers and young adults would have had their whole lives ahead of them. What’s more, the people who wrote those stories didn’t just become people when they died. And, more importantly, I knew there were so many other stories. But because Frank’s diary is so widely known, and because she wrote about circumstances that most of us will never have to endure, I found it hard to connect to her on a deeper level. In fact, back when I read it in middle school, she was my introduction to the lived experience of someone who had died at the hands of Nazis, and I found her resilience inspiring. And yes, Frank’s book, The Diary of a Young Girl, is a perennial international best-seller that introduces younger audiences to the Holocaust, and her story is one of boundless courage and perseverance. Not because of any problem I have with Anne Frank or the museum (on my next visit, I was smart enough to get tickets in advance), but the truth is that Nazis murdered another 6 million people besides Frank, including millions of teenagers. And when I think about that, with all due respect to Frank and her family and legacy, it’s kind of bullshit.
She’s actually probably the only Holocaust victim most people can name. Frank, of course, is no head-bopping DJ - but she is a celebrity, arguably the most famous victim of the Holocaust, if there can be something so bizarre, so tragic. But nope, it was the Anne Frank House, and apparently, it’s like this every day the museum is open, the line of visitors stretching from the door, along the canal, and through the cobblestone square, hoping to experience just a glimmer of Frank’s life, and death. Are they all waiting to get in? You’d think it was one of Amsterdam’s most popular clubs, with some moody, hipper-than-thou DJ spinning from his throne.
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