I am highly disturbed by the level of ignorance people display about Anne Frank this day and age. I have known about Anne Frank for as long as I have known about Adolph Hitler, since I was a child, and the two are almost synomynous to me. As a child, I didn't understand the importance of her diary, all I cared about was that she died, and how she died.
So, it bothers me, nowadays, when I read a 2009 book about Anne's diary that describes how a teacher asked her students what they thought Anne's life in Auschwitz or Belsen must have been like. One student writes about how Anne must have loved being able to frolic gaily in the fresh air around nature, having been cooped up in an attic for two years. When the teacher asks how many agree with this statement, a majority of her students raise their hands. Scary.
It makes me all the more frightened when, early November, I heard Miami Dolphins Linebacker, Channing Chowder, dropping some trash talk involving Anne Frank, Stevie Wonder, and some Baltimore Ravens player spitting on him. Should I have been relieved that he meant to drop Helen Keller's name instead of Anne's?
Imagine my relief! Here, I thought he was just being insensitive to the victims of the Holocaust, but it turns out that he doesn't even know enough not to confuse her, Hitler's most famous victim, with an American girl with disablities who occupied a completely different time-period and setting, as a child, and who lived to advanced age. What a relief. And this is a grown man making, what, over 15K a year?
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Thusnelda
14 years ago
I have known about Anne Frank for as long as I have known about Adolph Hitler, since I was a child, and the two are almost synomynous to me.
Yours,
Thusnelda
Das Fliegerlied
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1STczDmo66Y
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BoyWiththeGreenHair
14 years ago
lol, I do not mean to say they are simlar in ideaology, actions, or belief; only that when I think of one, I think of the other. As a child, I was read David A. Adler's A Picture Book of Anne Frank.
Having no knowledge about WWII whatsoever at 6 years old, all I could understand was that there was this guy named "Adolph Hitler" who was supposed to be "very bad" for some reason. At the same time, I had no idea who this "Anne Frank" was, but I thought it was funny that this book was focusing so much on her childhood. "Surely her adulthood would be equally interesting," I thought to myself. Even when the book focused on her arrest and deportation, I thought for sure she would escape and survive.
David A. Adler had written similar books (all of which I had read and enjoyed) on the likes of Fredrick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Sitting Bull, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, etc. who had defied racial social boundaries, and in some cases racial genocide or slavery, to experience full lives and peaceful deaths. I figured Anne Frank's life would end similarly.
So, it was a sad moment of disillusionment when I discovered that this girl would die of "hunger and disease," along with her sister before either had turned twenty. It was hard for me to comprehend that this girl was one of many victims of a senseless mass murder for a reason that I had no grasp on at all. All I knew was that this guy named "Adolph Hitler" had been responsible for the death of Anne Frank.
So by "synonymous," I only meant they are crucially linked in my mind because I first learned of them both at the same time in my life. Just wanted to clear that up immediately before anyone else jumped to conclusions.
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