I didn’t need anyone to show me a hip movie about Anne Frank playing Nintendo or Tamagotchi while hiding in the attic to resonate with what she was experiencing - and when we minimize and flatten experiences like Anne’s into a digestible video series like this one, we do young people learning about tragedies like the Holocaust a great disservice. The thought never crossed my mind that I couldn’t empathize with her or didn’t understand her story because it took place in a different time or under different circumstances. ![]() Her story resonated with me not because I was a Jew or because I could put myself in her shoes but because it was clear to me, even as a 7-year-old, that no human being should be put through what she was put through. I remember being a small child reading her words again and again from the book I’d checked out of my school library, hiding under my covers and reading with a flashlight to better feel tightly enclosed the way that Anne did. The videos are absolutely haunting, and I only felt more sick the more I watched the series - but not for the reasons you might think.Īs a Jewish kid in the early aughts, I took to Anne Frank’s story immediately. The story jumps, then, and the subsequent videos in the series take us into Anne and her family’s lives two years on, in 1944, right before they were arrested and taken to the camps.Īnne Frank video diary, cast (people in hiding) in living room (Ray van der Bas/Anne Frank House) She says goodbye to her cat and the family flees, walking an hour to escape to the location they’ll be laying low in. I feel like writing.”Īs the first episode ends, we see Anne hurriedly put her clothes on and turn off the lights at home, prepared to go into hiding with her family. In addition to the fact that Anne didn’t originally write in her diary as something for others to consume, no matter how much she might have wished for or tried to create companionship with her friends and family she hid in the attic with, she literally didn’t think anyone would be “interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl.” Still, she wrote in her diary for herself, stating, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. From the beginning, this struck me as a gross mistelling of Anne’s story.Īnne Frank video diary, Luna (Anne) at attic (Image: Ray van der Bas/Anne Frank House) “It’s nice to have someone I can talk to about this,” Anne says as she explains that she and her family are going into hiding and the first episode comes to a close. “Anne, put the camera away,” her mother demands.įrom there, Anne begins using the camera to document what’s happening as the Nazis gain power, speaking to it, or to us, and making vlogs in what is supposed to be an homage to how she wrote in her diary - only visual. Anne cries, sitting behind her mother on a bicycle as they ride through the town, where we see Nazis harassing people on the nearly-empty street. We’re shown signs in the town that say “Jews not welcome” and the music becomes ominous, the sunshine fading. ![]() Then, after the first minute of the pilot episode, things turn dark. The first episode shows Anne spending time with her best friend Jaqueline, laughing, going outside on walks, all while they bear the yellow Star of David that Nazis made Jews wear during their reign. You cannot further humanize someone whose story you are manipulating you can only erase their humanity. But in the sense that they completely erase the dire circumstances that Anne Frank was facing and all of the context surrounding her in the 1940s as the Holocaust raged on and the Nazis ruined the lives of Jews and those who dared to be their allies, the videos fail.
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