No, Anne Frank didn’t foresee the rise of Donald Trump. But she did write this prescient passage in her diary only two weeks before the Dutch police accidentally discovered her hiding place, arrested her family, and sent them to the camps. To anyone especially depressed by the past two months in American political life, you must read this passage (especially the last sentence):
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.
I came upon this quotation as I read her diary for the first time since I was a teenager. I’m leading a reading group for my daughter’s middle school class. Since they will be visiting the Washington Holocaust Center, the book was assigned to them. As soon as I read this, I immediately thought of our current predicament.
And no, I’m not comparing Donald Trump to Hitler nor this era to the Holocaust. Remember after all that Anne, at the time she wrote this, didn’t know that six-million Jews had been exterminated. She knew nothing of the Holocaust. She knew that the world was living through a hellish era of hate and violence and that many had died as a result. So Anne’s thoughts are perfectly in synch with what’s happening today and need to remind us that this will not last forever. That popular resistance, even more than electoral politics and Congressional action, is vital. We must resist. If we do, we will win. The American people will win.
No, Anne didn’t say that, I did.
“Remember after all that Anne, at the time she wrote this, didn’t know that six-million Jews had been exterminated. She knew nothing of the Holocaust.”
Anna Frank knew condition are bad enough that she should stay in hiding, not resist or protest.
@ Jim: Of course she knew that conditions were bad. She knew many Jews had died. But she had no idea that the vast majority of European Jewry had been annihilated.
But no, Anne did not make the decision to go into hiding. In fact it was made for her by her father. They could’ve tried to leave for England or France (though either one would’ve been a perilous attempt).
What important is, at the end, your comparison is preposterous
It is such statements that make people believe the left is delusional. Fear mongering isn’t only a Bibi thing.
@ Jim: No, in fact it’s quite apt. Otto Frank sought refuge in the U.S. before the Holocaust and was repeatedly denied a visa. As a result his entire family was wiped out. After the war, he was finally granted the right to come here. But it was too late.
Donald Trump promises to offer the same treatment to today’s refugees.
No. It is an invidious comparison.
No Syrians are being threatened with extermination because they are Syrian. No Muslim is being threatened with extermination because they are Muslim. There are dozens of Muslim countries spread out over a huge territory. Many Muslim countries are well-armed and wealthy.
@ Ben: Trump is treating refugees trying to enter the U.S. precisely as the U.S. treated Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. You misinterpreted what I wrote. I didn’t mean he was planning to exterminate them. But that he was closing America’s doors to refugees threatened with death in their homelands.
Anne Frank House
A long time ago I watched the movie about Anne Frank’s diary …
A combination of courage, hope and devastation. Very impressive.
I was born in The Netherlands just after Germany capitulated. My parents and older siblings lived through the German occupation. The impact of the war determined the fate of so many and burdoned all who survived. Scars of war last beyond one generation. We lived in the coastal area which had been fortified as the Atlantik Wall with bunkers, ammunition depots, etc. The family house was in the Sperrgebiet, so my parents had to move to Leiden. Two young men were hidden in the house as the Germans roamed outside and inside, asking tricky questions to my oldest brothers of three years old.
Even today as I live in The Hague, the history of the German occupation can be found and touched in the neighborhood. The German HQ of Seyss-Inquart, fortified bunkers, launching area of the V1 and V2 rockets from inside wooded area, park Haagse Bos and a short distance the neighborhood Bezuidenhout where the British air force misinterpreted the coordinates of the indended target and bombed a civilian area killing over 1000 just months before Liberation Day. The intended target was the district a few hundred yards further west … the homes left standing of which one I call home.
History seldom repeats itself in a recognized way, however I do see many parallels to the period of one hundred years ago. I have been a optimist all my life, but in the last ten years and especially with the American people voting DT into office, a cold sweat made me realize the danger of a new global war.
The world lacks true leaders who can set aside differences for a common goal of good in the global community. A new form of fascism has taken hold in the western world and expedited after the attacks of 9/11 by talking Fear [Inc.] and advocating Islamophobia as a policy. The Iraq War had a devastating effect on abiding by International Law, inhumane practices of torture, rendition and black sites for prisons.
The morals and values of an Exceptional America have lost all meaning and certainly are not an example for Western Europe or any other nation of our planet.