Since its release, The Diary of Anne Frank has become a well-known piece of literature to old and young alike.
In conjunction with the U theater department’s production of the diary, local scholars held a panel discussion last week in the Babcock Theatre where they addressed the importance of the now-famous diary.
Janet Kaufman, an associate professor of English, described visiting Amsterdam, where she saw Anne Frank’s red-and-white checkered diary.
“It’s a personal document,” Kaufman said. “Personal documents speak to people in a way that academic documents don’t.”
Anne Frank began keeping a diary on her 13th birthday in 1942. A few weeks later, the Franks were forced into hiding to avoid deportation to Nazi concentration camps. The family hid for more than two years in the attic of an office building with four other people. In 1944 the group was discovered and sent to a concentration camp. Anne Frank’s father, Otto, was the only member of the Frank family to survive the Holocaust.
After the war, Otto Frank eventually received his daughter’s meticulously kept diary. Upon reading it, he commented that he really didn’t know his daughter.
“I was so taken aback by this comment,” Kaufman said. “Here he has lived with her in a small space for over two years, without ever going outside. He was talking like the typical parent of an adolescent — he didn’t know his daughter.”
Local author Eileen Hallet Stone also participated in last week’s discussion. Raised in a Jewish household, she frequently heard relatives speak about the Holocaust.
As a child, Stone said she “often wondered what would happen if someone took us and forced us from our home.”
Stone said the hatred and discrimination seen during the Holocaust is still a problem in today’s society, even though many people think the problem has disappeared.
Panelists discussed moral issues surrounding WWII, such as whether Holocaust perpetrators were evil people.
When U history professor Ronald Smelser teaches his classes, he suggests that students go beyond “demonizing the perpetrators and sanctifying the victims” of the Holocaust.
“These men obviously did evil — there’s no question about that,” Smelser said. “The question is, were they, as human beings, evil?”
Smelser said many Nazis were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both the generations before and after the Nazis led normal, honorable lives, he said.
During the discussion, one audience member asked if Hitler was insane. Smelser said viewing the Nazis as insane murderers impedes our understanding because we simply write them off as being lunatics. Smelser said many psychologists have analyzed Hitler’s life and concluded he was not insane.
“(Hitler) gets off the hook too easily that way,” he said.
The U theater department’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” runs from Oct. 3 to Oct. 6 and will be performed at both Kingsbury Hall and the Babcock Theatre. For more information visit www.theatre.utah.edu.
Teresa GettenBob Nelson, Janet Kaufman, Eileen Hallet Stone, and Ronald Smelser speak in a panel discussion sponsored by the U’s International Studies Program and the United Jewish Federation of Utah last Thursday. The panel preceded the performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Babcock Theater.