A Reflection as a Tribute

In memory of Anne Frank on the 65^th anniversary of her death and in honor of all women, I composed this reflection during Women’s History Month last year.

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I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the ‘Secret Annex’ are humorous, there’s a lot in my diary that speaks—but whether I have real talent remains to be seen.

~words of Anne Frank in her famous diary

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Anneliese Marie Frank and her sister Margot Betti Frank died 65 years ago, within days of one another. It was March of 1945, the month before Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British. Anne was 15, and Margot was 19, two of 17,000 deaths that resulted from deprivation and disease that month in that place. They were two of the 1.5 million murdered children and two of the almost 6 million murdered Jews of the Holocaust.

They lay dying next to each other near the open door of the barracks. They were too weak to get up and close the door to shut out the bitter North Sea wind.

Two promising lives had lain ahead of them: Anne’s as a writer and journalist in Paris or London and Margot’s as a nurse and midwife in Palestine.

For her 15^th birthday just nine months earlier, while still in hiding at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, Anne received

…all five parts of Springer’s History of Art,…a handkerchief, a pot of jam,…a book on botany from Mummy and Daddy, a double bracelet from Margot, a book from the Van Daans,…and, the high spot of all, the book Maria Theresa, and three slices of full-cream cream cheese from Kraler.

While in hiding, they studied French and English, worked together on crossword puzzles, read Goethe and Schiller, played "Monopoly," listened to opera on the radio, and enjoyed the antics and comfort that the cats brought to their claustrophobic hiding place. Anne had a lot of time to develop her perspectives on the world:

In no way do I mean…that women should turn against childbearing, on the contrary, nature has made them like that and that is all to the good. I merely condemn all the men, and the whole system, that refuse ever to acknowledge what an important, arduous, and in the long run beautiful part, women play in society.

Speaking and presenting at local study groups

In September of last year, I was asked to replace the rabbi, who was not available, at a study group of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, Ohio. The group has been meeting for 37 years, and I was invited to present selections from Anne Frank’s writings. I chose writings that expressed Anne’s belief in God and her sense of being Jewish which evolved while she was in hiding.  The study group then discussed their reactions--they were in awe at the clarity and maturity of Anne’s writing.

On February 18 at 8:00 in the evening, I will be speaking at the monthly Shabbat dinner of the Jewish Secular Community of Cleveland. The group meets at the First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights.

A thank you note from the Cleveland-area Mensa group

In August of last year, I spoke to 25 members of the Cleveland -area Mensa group. The thank you note stated this:

Thank you for your thoughtful and informative presentation and for sharing this inspirational story. It was amazing and quite moving to hear the actual voice of Miep Gies on the interview you did with her in 1997. It was also very effective when you put the events in the context of your own lifetime and timeframe--how close we truly are to what we think of as only historical events.

A tree grew in Amsterdam

Anne Frank’s legacy lives on in movie, film, book, musical, sitcom and saplings

An old tree was recently felled by high winds and rain, not an unusual event during dramatic summer thunderstorms in August. However, the final moments of this 160-year-old horse chestnut tree were photographed and broadcast around the world. This was the Anne Frank Tree, the tree Anne wrote about that was in the back courtyard of the canal-side building in Amsterdam where she and her family and four other Jews hid for more than two years.

Looking out of the attic window, Anne was able to keep track of the tree's seasonal changes that helped her develop a close connection with nature she had not had before and which she could now experience only through curtains and windows. "Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It's covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," Anne wrote in her diary on May 13, 1944.

Read more of this story in Cleveland Jewish News.