User:Melos Antropon

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Re: "Diary of a Young Girl" Hi Yallery:

Regarding my current re-write on the above article, either Anne disposed of the missing volume(s) or she didn't. Those are the only two choices - there aren't any other possibilities! And it is not known which. There is no speculation involved in that. But eliminating something because "it seems unlikely" to you, is a speculation. Fair is fair, OK?

Melos Antropon 22:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello Melos,

Not quite fair. Where does your suggestion that Anne Frank may have destroyed volumes of her diaries come from? On what is this based? Speculation isn't required. We know why her missing works didn't survive. They haven't survived for the same reason that nothing other than what Miep and Bep rescued has survived. No furniture from the hiding place survives either. Should we therefore mention the possibility that Anne Frank may have destroyed that too?

If we were in possession of Anne Frank's entire literary output we could justifiably surmise over the absence of some specific articles. We could reasonably conclude that the author may have chosen to destroy anything she did not want to keep. However this is not so in the case of Anne Frank's remaining legacy; posterity was not bequeathed her entire output to examine. What survives of her writings is only what was rescued in haste before the contents of the hiding place were confiscated. Other pieces mentioned by Anne Frank were not among the collected manuscripts. As Gerrald van der Stroom puts it in his Introduction to Tales from the Secret Annex (in the Revised Critical Edition):

"Given the chaos on that fatal August 4 and the subsequent confusion in the Annex, it is a wonder that anything at all survived. [...] The diary of her sister Margot [...] must have gotten lost in the shuffle [...] a separate notebook which Anne had bought for new and difficult words, and a card file in which Anne and Margot kept track of the books they read have not survived."

Miep and Bep hadn't time to be either thorough or discerning about what to save, as the survival of random jottings Anne made during her studies testifies: translation exercises, notes on European royal families, and a notebook of her favourite quotations were also amongst the haul.

There also seems to be a misunderstanding over what the re-written or 'loose version' of Het Achterhuis is, and was, to Anne Frank. We know that because the 'loose version' was to form the basis of a book she planned to work on later. Anne did not rewrite selected diary entries to replace her diaries so they could be subsequently destroyed by her if she so chose (and nowhere in her diaries does she mention such an intention, in fact she states the opposite, that she wants to keep them and didn't even strike out let alone destroy passages which latterly embarrassed her). The 'loose version' is also incomplete with missing pages. Should we speculate that Anne chose to destroy these? The fact that Anne retained the first and second volumes that she rewrote surely shows she had not intention of throwing them away?

As Gerrald van der Stroom also states in his Introduction, again: "Anne [had] no time to sort through her manuscripts, put them into safekeeping or even destroy them."

With best wishes, Yallery Brown 01:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello Melos,

Thanks for your message. There are several points I'd like to pick up on.

I had a problem with the quote from Melissa Mueller's book for several reasons, the primary being that I don't think it is an accurate evaluation of the situation. Her interpretation not only overlooks the context of the people in the hiding place and therefore their lack of options in housing Pfeffer, but also (by applying amateur psychology to the situation) turns what was a difficult choice into something that is made to seem symptomatic of Otto and Edith Frank's parental skills. I'd like you to look at this statement again. It says:

"Otto and Edith's decision to put Pfeffer in the same room with Anne . . . corroborates Anne's complaint that she was in fact regarded as a child. Not only Otto but Edith Frank as well disregarded her growing need for privacy and obviously ignored their adolescent daughter's sense of modesty . . " (my emphasis)

Now, there are several terms in this statement which could lead an uninformed reader to conclude that Otto and Edith neglected Anne's needs by lodging Pfeffer with her. That 'not only Otto but Edith Frank as well disregarded her' suggests they'd failed her together. The words 'disregarded' and 'ignored' in this context also do not suggest attentive, considerate parents, of which, of course, Otto and Edith Frank were. The point could certainly be made that it wasn't an ideal situation for Anne (or for Pfeffer for that matter) but we have to balance any assessment we may make in retrospect with an understanding of the original context.

Up to this point, I have to agree with your presentation.

It's cheap to conclude that because Anne had to share a room in the hiding place with Pfeffer her parents didn't care about her, because it suggests they could have done otherwise.

Whoa! I never concluded that, and I doubt any thinking person could. Upon reflection, (as I indicated above) I think Muller's choice of words was a bit too strong for the description - or the TRANSLATORS were - but I think Mullers point was that Otto and Edith - not out of cruelty, not out of neglect, and not out of stupidity, but just because they were human beings, and like all of us they occasionally "dropped the ball" - merely "dropped the ball" on that one. I see it as a decision that they really should have thought through again. And I can think of at least two - if not three - alternate sleeping arrangements that could have been made, but that is armchair quarterbacking, I realize.

You see, I don't think it is a long way to say that this passage accuses the Franks of neglect. In fact, I think that's all it suggests. I hope you can understand that for that reason I opposed it's inclusion.

I understood from the outset that that was the reason you opposed it. But I still think it is much too much of a reach to view it in that light. Two things come through clearly to any reader of Mullers book: 1) That Otto Frank was basically a fine man who did the best he could, and 2) That Edith Frank was a fine, caring mother, to whom Anne was very unfair in many ways.

I am not against to offering interpretations by respected (or otherwise) authors. There is certainly a place for an assessment of critical evaluation, but does it belong within the context of a short biography? That's debatable, but it certainly exists elsewhere here. What I think we have to guard, especially in articles relating to the Holocaust (which are vandalised almost every day by random editors and by people with a political agenda), is accuracy on every level. These pages aren't the same as the pieces on particles or the disappearance of the dinosaurs because these subjects, as you rightly point out, are speculative and open to new interpretation as research continues, whereas the recent history of the Holocaust and its victims isn't so obscure that we're still uncertain as to what or how it happened. For that reason, I think in this instance we should avoid presenting any interpretation as verifiable fact.

I couldn't agree more with that. But as you state it there, I could have prefaced my direct quote from Muller with the words "An opinion expressed by author Melissa Muller states:" and you would have let it be. Really?

I'm also aware that several passages in Mueller's book (her conclusion, for instance, that Lena van Hartog was the betrayer,

Intriguing, but merely amateur detective work, agreed.

and that Otto Frank reneged on a promised inheritance to Miep Gies)

Miep wrote the afterwards to Mullers book - I can't believe she let that piece of information pass as Muller wrote it, if she disagreed with it.

have been vigorously challenged by Anne Frank historians and by surviving members of the Frank family as being inaccurate and unjust. In fact, the book was considered so slanted that the Anne Frank Foundation refused to endorse it when it was adapted for television, which forbade use of quotes from Anne's diary being used in the production.

Out of curiosity, did you see that film? It wasn't perfect, far from it, but it was MUCH more historically accurate than "The Diary of Anne Frank", which Otto DID approve. And, the Anne Frank Fonds has their own views of a lot of things that are difficult to understand in many ways. They could have had any number of reasons for their difficulties with the film, Muller's biography, and their dissatisfaction with it, being one of them of course. But she had full cooperation from them in writing it. It would be foolish to say that Muller didn't opinionate in the book, but she was/is a highly respected journalist who has done as much or more than anyone to illuminate the period of what she calls "Hitler's racial madness". You would look long and hard to find anyone who has done more than Melissa Muller to get the message of the horror of the Holocaust out to a generation that knows only periphally about it - save Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal, of course. The book she wrote with Traudl Junge - innacuracies that there may be and all - was excellent.

Carol Ann Lee's biography of Otto Frank, and the report by NIOD into the betrayal of the families points out further inaccuracies in the book.

That works both ways. If you have read both books in depth (and I assume you have) you know that Lee's book - which I very much liked, too - has some outright wrong information in it. Most noteworthy: Her statement that Herman van Pels was gassed on September 6, 1944, when the train arrived in Auschwitz. That is simply not true - by considerable eyewitness testimony. I detected several mistakes in BOTH books. Try as they might to be accurate and objective, both Lee and Muller, like Otto and Edith - and Anne herself - were human, and made mistakes. You obviously disliked Mullers book. That is your right, I'm certain you have plenty of company, and vice-versa (though as I said, I liked both books, and found both very worthwhile for different reasons.) But if you reach the point of taking issue with anyone who used Muller's book for a source - and I'm not saying you have - yet - you would be very unfair, and very "un-Wiki".

Thank you for your compliments about my writing and I appreciate your opinion that I spilt hairs. You're absolutely right, I do! In my defence, you may have seen from my page that I wrote the articles on Anne's diary, her family and the other people in her life and as I've already said I have to remove vandalism from one or more of them almost every day,

As I have had to do myself.

often from people who wish to deny the facts of Anne Frank's life and in a larger context, the Holocaust, by questioning ambiguities that may appear. It's for that reason that I think it's essential that anything presented in them as a fact is just that. Not conjecture, not an interpretation, but a fact. If that means splitting hairs, I'm willing to do it.

I agree completely, of course, but I though I made it very clear to any reasonably intelligent reader (there will never be anything we can do about morons) that I was quoting another's view. Speaking for myself, though, between raising my own children, and having taught girls that age for 30 years, even if we assume that the biggest problem between Anne and Pfeffer was the basic abrasiveness of their two personalities vis-a-vis each other, the fact that this utterly normal adolescent girl had to share her sleeping space with a middle-age man was unquestionably a constant source of "more logs on the fire" to her overall view of Pfeffer. There would have been something abnormal about Anne if it weren't. But that aspect is the "elephant in the living room", the thing everyone knows is there, but no one wants to talk about. Muller had the guts to talk about it, even if she did phrase it very inelegantly, and I admire her for that.

Two of my favorite creative artists who ever lived are Franz Schubert and Anne Frank, because both were outright geniuses at what they excelled at, and both make one wonder what they might have accomplished if they had lived a normal lifespan. I am a longtime researcher and educator, and I have a passionate interest in truth and accuracy. But I know full well we cannot write every article so perfectly that the morons cannot 'read into it' what they want to - and it's futile to try. I believe Anne Frank was an enormously gifted, but very human, very NORMAL girl, which makes her accomplishments all the more amazing, and she herself all the more endearing. I also believe that the more that is known about the life, times, surroundings and friends of any person helps you to understand even better who that person was (see my expansion of the article "People Associated With Anne Frank").

I would add in closing that it is nice to debate with a highly intelligent person for a change, and that I am guessing you are from England or Canada, as virtually no American spells "defense" with a "c".

--Melos Antropon 02:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello again,

I was heartened by your comments about Anne Frank being 'normal' etc. It shows a realisitic view of her. Anne's flaws and frailties are often overlooked, but in reading her diary I felt that her acute awareness of them made her so much more appealing than she might have been without them. I remember an interview with Otto Frank in which he was asked if there was one person in the hiding place that everyone had a problem with and he ruefully replied that there was: it was Anne. Pfeffer and Anne were wholly incompatible roommates and the relationship was significant for both of them for a short period of time, and for that reason it should be discussed by biographers. My problem was with Melissa Mueller's interpretation of the cause of the friction being due to Anne's parents inconsideration, when in fact Anne's relationships with almost everyone in the hiding place were ambivalent and often stormy, something of which, again, she was painfully aware. Any re-assessment of the hiding plan is pointless and might seem in bad taste when one bears in mind how desperate they were and what their eventual fate was to be. Bruno Bettelheim, for example, in his book on the Holocaust did just that and took an accusatory line of thought to an extreme by going as far as to say that the lack of an emergency exit, an escape plan, and weapons in the Secret Annexe failed the people in hiding making Otto Frank guilty of negligence. Is speculation like that of any use to anyone trying to understand what happened?

It's not that I dislike Melissa Mueller's book (and I'm in no way trying to write off all of her work), in fact there's a lot in it that is admirable and very interesting, especially her research into Edith Frank's family and Anne's schoolfriends, however just as you pointed out few books are flawless. Having read and researched Anne Frank's life for about twenty years I can only conclude that the definitive biography is yet to be written.

You're close with your guess at my location; not Canada, closer to England. I'm in Scotland. Yallery Brown 11:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)