Anne Frank, Desecrated

By now a large part of the world, particularly the West, knows about the young Jewish girl whose family fled Nazi Germany for Holland, only to find that the country had the highest rate of police compliance in turning Jews over to the Nazis.

And thus, Anne Frank wound up in a Nazi concentration camp, where she lost her life at the mere age of 14, her battered corpse disposed in a mass grave where human beings were treated on a par equalling that of trash or animal waste.

The original play about Frank, written by Meyer Levin, was based upon Anne Frank's diary but was rejected by Communist and anti-Jewish producer Lillian Hellman because it was 'too Jewish.'

The play that finally made it to Broadway and was ultimately adapted into a major film complied with Hellman's insistence that Frank's Jewish roots be de-emphasized and that she be 'universalized' into a generic 'everyman.'

That version, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, won a Pulitzer prize.

Curiously, that version never tells us that Frank died anonymously in the camp or that her body was dumped into a mass grave at the hands of barbarians who hated Jews or anyone else who loved freedom.

And that version is also the one that desecrates the heritage and memory of Anne Frank, as Meyer Levin later wrote in his book Obsession.

Marilyn Penn at Political Mavens has done the world a great service in exposing the fraud that Hellman and company unleashed on the world, and thereby preserving the integrity and truth of the real story of Anne Frank.

Penn's excellent essay can be found here.