The Life and Mission of Otto Frank

Unless some compelling new document comes to light, it appears unlikely that we will even know who betrayed the Frank family, calling Gestapo headquarters and alerting them that Jews were hiding in 267 Prinsengracht Street.  There were at least two official Dutch inquiries in the matter.  Many people were interviewed, there were some suspects who seemed likely to have betrayed them, but in the end there was a lack of evidence to arrest anyone.

Carol Anne Lee, in her biography of Otto Frank, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, makes a case for Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch Nazi, informant, and general low life.  But the case against him is not very convincing; in the end, it is simply circumstantial, and weak at that.  Ms. Lee tries to show that Otto Frank was being blackmailed by Ahlers after the war, since Frank’s company had business  dealings with the German Army.  Again, this in itself does not constitute proof.  Much of what she marshals is inadmissible hearsay.

By far the best part of this book is her exploration of Otto Frank’s life following the death of his family.  In all ways, he was responsible for carrying on his daughter Anne’s legacy following her murder with the publication of her diary. As the promoter of the diary, he was Anne’s postmortem extension in the world.  He carried on her work because she was unable to; at first this took a heavy toll on his health.  But eventually, it became his life’s mission.  We can safely say that his sorrow would have been more encapsulated if it were not for Anne’s diary and its great popularity.  Carol Anne Lee does a very good job at exploring the life and mission of Otto Frank.  She shows how even great loss can lead to a kind of redemption.

Re-Reading Anne Frank

After being baptized by certain misguided Mormons for, I believe, the ninth time, I decided to re-read Anne Frank’s diary.  I read it last in my late teens.

When I read it as a teen, I had no problem believing a teenager could write material that contains such perspicuity.  As an adult, I find it difficult to believe.   And hence, we see the gulf between children’s self-understanding, and the adult’s perception of that understanding.  In the 25 plus years since I have read the diary, I have assumed the rigid attitude and stultifying thought patterns of an adult.  One of these side products is to believe that a girl at fourteen can’t write anything substantial about herself and her world.  What a sad commentary on the maturation of the human mind.  

On a technical level, I find it fascinating to learn that the diaries were a very conscious effort on Anne Frank’s part to create a published book.  The conception that the diary was found, complete from beginning to end, is wrong.  She wrote the diaries almost as an epistolary memoir.  She went back and revised passages.  The work we have in our hands when we read it is a composite of sorts.  An original diary, its revision, and a combination of the two, edited by her father, Otto Frank.   This is all expressed in fascinating detail in Francine Prose’s  Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.  I highly recommend this book as a companion piece to any re-reading of Anne Frank’s work.