48 LAGERWEY

READING ANNE FRANK AND ELIE WIESEL: VOICE AND

GENDER IN STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST*

Mary D. Lagerwey
Western Michigan University
(ContemporaryJewryv.17 1996)

I consider two life stories, Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl and
Nigh~ that have played major roles in shaping collective memories of the
Holocaust in the United States. These collective representations, including
I argue, widely read personal accounts of the Holocaust, add to and
surpass personal experience as a source o f lmowledge. The two stories are
examined through lenses of gender. I drawfrom the Durkheimian tradition
of coUective representations and argue that the reception and popularia/
of this pair of stories have been constituted by their gendered nature

In this article I draw from the Durkheimian tradition of collective

representations (Durkheim [ 1912] 1965) and suggest that the reception of
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank [1947] 1993) and Wiesers
(1958) Night have been constituted by the gendered nature of these works.
These differences constitute not only patterns of writing, but how these
works of self-writing are received.
Durkheim tells us that we come to know the world, in part, through
conorete collective representations. These collective representations, in-
cludinE I argue, widely read personal accounts of the Holocaust, add_to and
surpass personal experience as a source of knowledge. According to
Halbwacks, one of Durkheim's students (in Mestrovic 1988: 24), collective
memories, or the "social reconstruction of the past achieved with data
borrowed from the present," are one form of collective representation.
Widelyread personal accounts of the Holocaust are, thus, in effect, collected
repmsentatious from which societyforms its collective memory of its events.
As individuals, we borrow from collective memory as shaped by personal
accounts such as the life writings of Anne Frank and Erie Wiesel and
incorporate them as our own personal memories.
Writing on autobiography, Frieden speaks to the ways in which personal
accounts of any event become incorporated into societal knowledge. She
writes (1989:186):
That which is perceived as individual experience becomes a collective
expression with the public act of autobiography, a voice that carries
a sense of life at that time. Authors of autobiography offer their
individual specificity to the commnnlty, where private experience is
adopted and validated as 0ommu~ilyhistory.
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 49

To the extent that accounts are constituted, constructed and received by a

society, that society can borrow from these ac~:ounts to form borrowed
memories of events removed by time, place and person. In turn, our personal
memories are borrowed from collective expressions of events.

DATA SEARCHES AND RESULTS

I reviewed university-level syllabi on the genocide and the Holocaust

published by the American Sociological Association (ASA) (Porter 1992).
Night is on nine out of fifteen course reading lists (most notably absent on
c~sses on genocide), butAnne FraY" The Diary o f a Young Girl is on only
one. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's (USHMM)
"Annotated Bibliography" (1993) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's (1993)
"Eduoational Resources Kit" ~ m e n d her diary and Night equally for
middle and secondary school reading. Both works are included in the
Washington USHMM interactive educational computer data base.
Additional searches show both texts widely cited in journals, magazines
and books in the United Stales, with Anne Frank's not only published earlier
in the States (E.n~li.ch editions in 1952 and 1960 respectively), but coming
to ~-,,~,~moe much earlier than Wiesers. As early as the mid 1950s, Anne
Frank's work was so well known that Francois Mauriac, the Frenchman who
encouraged the young journalist Erie Wiesel to write his story, wrote
(1956/1989: viii) in his forward to Night that he hoped that the readers of
Wiesers story would become "as numerous as those of The Diary o f Anne
Frank."
The on-ling Biography Index (FirstSea~h 1996a) from July 1984 to
December 1995 covers in excess of 2,700 English-language periodicals;
over 1,800 books are added each year' It shows the first biographical
information about Anne Frank in a periodical appearing in 1952, the year
her diary first appeared in an English publication, but does not cite Elie
Wiesel until a single entry in 1968, eight years after Nighfs Engfish
publiealiun. Since lhen and unlil Janumy of 1996, Anne Frank is cited a total
of 112 times, with sixteen of these citations listed as "Juvenile Literature"
and one as "Drama" m 1956. Seventeen of the citations were prior to 1960,
and another twenty-one clustered around the 1989 sixtieth Anniversary of her
birth. Erie Wiesel is cited fifty-two times, and only four times as "Juvenile
Literature." He received twelve citations, his maximum for a single year, in
1986-1987 immediately following his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. 2
By every measure that I undertook, Night and Anne Frank: The Diary of
a Young Girl have received extensive academic and public attention in the
United States? Two clear patterns emerge. First, Anne Frank, author of one
major work, is s y n ~ and conceptually inseparable from her diary. All
50 LAGERWEY

references to her include references to her diary. Furthermore, recent

editions of other writings of hers, such as her short stories collected as Anne
Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex (Frank 1994), include prominent
references to her diary. In contrast, as a survivor, Elie Wiesel has received
much media attention apart from his memoir, and has written numerous
scholarly and popular articles and books. His fame extends to his political
activities, and his role as a "messenger" from the Holocaust. References to
Elie Wiesel outnumber specific references to Night by over ten to one.
Second, although each tells a story of adolescence during the Holocaust,
Anne Frank wrote as an adolescent, and Elie Wiesel wrote as an adult, about
an adolescent. The attention paid to Night follows more closely traditional
indicators of canonical status, with prominence in MLA listings, and rare
notation as juvenile literature. Anne Frank's diary shows more public
attention, reflecting its unique immediacy for young readers, and its use as
an inlreduc6on to the Holocaust for secondary school readers. Her diary is,
therefore, more likely to be classified as juvenile literature. This is most
clearly demonstrated in the Biography Index (First Search 1996a), in
museum b~llographies and the ASA (Porter 1992) near-omi.~-ion of Anne
Franl~s work in college-level syllabi. As Lipstadt (1993:230) describes the
diary, "for many readers it [Frank 1947] is their introduction to the
Holocaust."
Yet, Anne Frank's and Elie Wiesers stories have certain parallels. They
were born only one year apart, Frank in 1929 and Wiesel in 1928. In 1944,
each was scat by lrain with their families to Auschwitz. Each survived initial
selections there, and lived for some months with a same-sex parent. Neither
of these parents survived the war. Each was taken from Auschwitz before
liberation: Frank to Bergen-Belsen, and Wiesel to Buchenwald.
Miraculously, some of each of their immediate families survived: Frank's
father and Wiesers sisters.
There are, however, important differences: most notably, Frank died
shortly before liberation, while Wiesel survived. Frank's work was published
first in Dutch in 1947, and in English in 1952. It preceded Wiesers original
Yiddish 1956 memoir by nine years, and the 1960 English publication of
Night by eight.

ANNE FRANK

Anne Frank's voice was heard as far back as the early 1950s and
resonates through the decades. For many young girls m the United States in
the 1950s and 1960s, her voice was not only a voice from the Holocaust, but
a solitary voice speaking for us in a frightening world in which our female
stories were silenced or unspoken. According to Rose, (1993a: 13):
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 51

Anne Frank stood for all the Jews who were murdered in the
Holocaust. [Yet,] she also stood for adolescent girls trying to assert
their indivkinality in the complicated context of family life . . . . Anne
Frank had a special meaning to girls. For she was real, not a fictional
creation. And she had written herself into being.
In liftsreading, Frank represents not only Holocaust victims, but a young girl
c~mlng of age/
On March 11, 1995, in a National Public Radio (NPR) discussion
~,,,i~moralmg the fiftieth anniversary of Anne Frank's death, NPR's Scott
Simon (1995: 25) interviewed Vincent Frank Steiner, President of the Anne
Frank Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. Their words point to the c~ntrality
of Anne Frank's story in shaping Holocaust memory and to the uses of her
story in wider contexts:
Simon: About 106,000 Dutch Jews were killed daring . . . the
Holocaust. . . .
Stehter: But the only pers~ which is known [sic] everywhere which has
been killed in German Concentration Camps is Anna [sic] Frank.
Simon: Aune Frank's own true story, set down in her own words, has
become the chronicle by which millions of people throughout the
world are taught and reminded that hate kills.
Anne Frank's words, first published in Dutch as HetAchterhuis ("The
Room~ the House") in 1947 and mitiaUy selling only fifteen hundred
copies, have survived over decades. Her diary was soon published in
Germany and France (1950), and in England and the United States (1952).
The 1955 play by Goodrich and Hackett (1956), "The Diary of Anne
Frank," won the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Critics' Circle Award and the
Antoinette Perry "Tony" Award. In 1959, George Stevens made the
Hackett-Goodfich play into a movie. Countless community and school
theaters have performed the playJ Today Anne Frank's diary is available in
over thirty langnages in ever fifty countries, and has sold over twenty million
copies. ~
Her story begins with an assimilated, well-to-do family living in serf-
imposed exile in Amsterdam. She, her parents Edith and Otto (code name,
'Tim"), and her sister Margot fled from Germany in 1933 to escape the
Nazis. She is bright, popular and financially secaxre. Her world shrinks by
degrees. On July 6, 1942, the Frank family and the van Pels family,
including their son Peter (code name, "van Daans"), move into a cramped
set of rooms cadled "her achterhuis" or "annex" next to an offi~ and
storeroom where her father has worked. Fritz Pfeffer a dentist (code name,
"Albert Dussel") soon joins them. Anne Frank writes of family and friends,
tensions and self-doubts, of thoughts and emotions, and of first love.
Much of what she wrote (Frank [1947] 1993) inher original diary was
edited out of earlier editions of her diary by her father, as too private-too
52 LAGERWEY

intimate--for public reading. The en~e diary was not published until the
1986 "Critical Edition." This version (Frank [1986] 1989), first published
in Dutch as De Dagboeken van Anne Frank, was prepared by the Reijks-
institnntvoor Oorlogsdocumentatie,Amsterdam, and contained the first and
second versions of Anne Frank's diary and the 1947/1952 edition of Her
Achterhuis/Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, as edited by her father.
Finally,in 1995 (Frank [1991] 1995), Doubleday published "The Definitive
Edition" whkh supplememedthe 1947/1952 version with Anne Frank's first
and secondversions, to produce a complete version of her diary, one which
"contains approximately 30 percent more material" (1995" vh'). It is from
this most recent edition that I have taken the quotes for this paper.
On August 4, 1944, three days after Anne Frank's final entry in her diary,
the Gestapo arrestedthe Frank family, the van Pels family, Fritz Pfeffer, and
two Dutch people who had been helping them, Victor Kugler and Johannes
Klelm~n Kugler and Klelm-- were imprisoned in Amsterdam and servived
the war. Of the eight in hiding, only her father, Otto Frank, survived. The
ravages of war and the Holocaust are offstage, coming into play only after
her last entry.

ELIE WIESEL

Erie Wiesel provides anotherprominent voice from the Holocaust speak-

ing through the years for Holocaust survivors. Born just one year before
Anne Frank, he tells an alternative story, although contemporaneous with
hers. For re+my,Wiesel's story, powerfully told, darkly written, has become
the stray of an Auschwitz survivor, if not the story of a Holocaust survivor.
His book (Wiesel ]1958] 1960), Night, was the first well-known memoir of
a Holocaust survivor. He serves on Presidential Commissions, appears on
late-night television and writes the foreword for the Encyclopedia o f the
Holocaust (Gutman 1990).
In 1956, long before he was well-known, Wie~el first published his
m e m ~ Night in Yiddish under the title, The Worm Was Silent. In 1958 an
abridged version was translated into French. And in 1960, the French
version was translatedinto ~ in the United States and given the current
title, Night. In 1996 he published his memoirs (Wiesel { 1994} 1996), the
story of his life from childhood to the present. While Wiesel's early works
were not widely reviewed at the time of publication, Night is now almost
uniformly included in bibliographies and syllabi on the Holocaust. It has
been translated into over 18 languages. An analysis of the entire Book
Review Index (beL~im~i-gin 1965) shows relatively little attention paid to it
prior to Wiesers 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, but increasing attention to it and
other works of his since. Repelled by triviMi7ation and believing of the
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 53

authentic power ofwords, Wiesel has refused to allow his story to be staged
or filmed (Martelle 1992: 4-C).
Wiesel's words capture much of the horror for the Jewish cxn.mn-ity,
from ghetto to trains to camp, through selections, death, and-for a
remnant-liberation. His story contains the major elements of the (male)
Auschwitz grand narrative. His story begins in a small town in Hungary. He
and his family are close and feel safe-in spite of deportation of foreign Jews
and the warnin~ of one "Moshe" [Moses] who returned from Poland where
he had been left for dead in a mass grave. When Germany invades Hungary,
and German (roops occupy the town. Wiesel's family believes that the war
will soon be over, and so they endure the arrests of Jewish leaders,
confiscation of valuables, and a decree demanding that all Jews wear a
yellow star. Then comes a forced move to a crowded ghetto, the
establidm~nt of a Jewish Council and police, and deportation of some- then
all-ghetto residents by cattle wagons to an unknown destination in the East.
In the days and nights on the train.% countless individuals die of starvation,
lack ofwater and suffocation before they arrive at the platforms of Birkenan
(Auschwitz ll).
On arrival there is the first selection: to the right for work, to the left for
immediate dealh-tt is a heinous game in which the players know neither the
rules nor the consequences of their decisions. Families are torn apart; never
to see each other again. Those given a reprieve endure the degradations:
stripped of all possessions, inchuting clothing, and totally shaved,
"di.~infcr inspecled and given rags for clothing. A melange of confusion,
unrelenting cruelty, senseless work, hunger, thirst, sickness, and death
follows. At the end, there is a march into GermAny through days of snow,
starvalion and bullets. Liberation comes only. after most, including Wiesel's
father and mother, have died.

GENDERED VOICES

An individual story, whether of a muntered victim or of one survivor, can

be more accessl~le to the ~ a t i e n and the emotions than a report of mass
suffering. Moreover, some have argued that Auschwitz so dehtm~aniTed
camp prisoners that it all but obliterated individual differences. Wiesel
(1978: 200) him~lf noted a uniformity in camp memoirs: "They seem to
have been written by one man, always the same, repeating a thousand limes
what you, the reader, even if you are his contemporary, will never
understand." The notion of a single representative story of victim or survivor
resonates in and through Wiesers words, and in the use of The Diary of
Anne Frank and Night as representative stories of Holocaust victims and
survivors.
54 LAGERWEY

It is no aocident that the representative story of a Holocaust survivor is

of an adult male, and the repl~entative story of a victim is of a young
female. I, too, initially thought of them as a child and an adult, and referred
to them as "Anne" and "WieseL" I then purposefully replaced these with fall
names. While Elie Wiesel speaks for survivors, Anne Frank speaks for
those killed in the camps (Rosenfeld 1991). Her voice, Levin (cited in
Cartes 1995: 26) asse~, ' q ~ n e s the voice of six million vanished Jewish
souls." She remains in our thoughts forever young, forever fifteen. Anne
Frank speaks for the dead, for children, and thus tells us a story not of an
exemplary life, but of a sympathetic viclim. 7
Frank's and Wiesers stories follow many conventions of Westera writing.
Wiesel, an adult male, represents for many in the United States all Holocaust
survivors. His voice speaks with coherence. It has come into prominence
following international recognition of him as a representative "suocessf~l"
Holocaust survivor. He, unlike Frank, is truly the author of all stages of his
work: initial writing, editing, rewriting, and answering challenges to the
veracity of his words.
Miseh's words (cited in Smith 1987: 4, 8) on representative lives capture
much of the role Wiesers tile has played"
the progressive unfolding of Western history can be read in the
representative lives of the people who partioipated in its unfolding and
9 . the particular types of Western Man can be read in the her-
.

meneeeics of each suc,cessive manifestation of serf-representation...

9 the contemporary intellectual outlook revealed in the style of an
eminent person who has himself played a part in the forming of the
spirit of his time.
Western amo/biographioal convention holds that one "suoc,essful" life story
oan embody an entire historical event or period: However, the subject of
master narratives is unequivocally male: "The white, male, bourgeois,
heterosexual human being becomes the representative man, the universal
human subject. 'His' life story becomes recognizable, legitimate, and
culturally real "(Smith 1993:393).
The response to Night oannot be separated fIom Elie Wiesel as a person,
one who allows us to believe in a suocessful outcome of not only survival,
bet of fame and goodness. This can be seen in critical responses to Wiesers
memoir, and in his own characterization of Holocaust personal narrative as
the telling of one story. His life approximates the model for classioal
autobiography as '~tbe life of a cultural hero . . . . [one who] triumphs over
myriad impediments . . . . a public figure" (Gergen and Gergen 1993: 195,
196). The notion of a representative voice "insists on its universality at the
same time that it defines that universality in specifically male terms"
(Fetterley 1977: xii). The Auschwilz smvivor is not only Elk: Wiesel, bee the
falsely tmiversalized representative male.
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 55

Many wdl-known storiesof the Holocaum speak to us through the voices

of men, voices mi.~akenly taken to speak for allthose who exp~enced the
Holocaust:
English language audiences know Holocaust literature primarily
tkrough male writers and have generalized those experiences to
represent the whole . . . . Narratives by women survivors, however,
form a group that ditfers si~ificantly from those by men.
(Goldenberg 1990: 150, 152).
Except for Anne Frank's story, texts of Holooaust memories have been
primarily male. As one Holocaust scholar (Hememaun 1986: 2-3) notes:
The study of Holocaust literature has focussed primarily on the
writings of men, whose perspectives have been taken as repre-
sentative of the experience of all Holocaust victimr However,
research which implies"universality" through men's writing and
experience is inadequate.
Autobiography theory and research consistently point to patterns of
gendered differences in self-writing (Heilbnm 1988, Mason 1980; Miller
1994). Moreover, these patterns are not only evident in the form and re-
ception of the Diary, but may be largely reaponst~olefor its renown. The
geme of Anne FraniCswork, a semi-private diary, and her victim status have
constiiuied its appeal for over half a century. Frank ([ 1947] 1993: 1) began
her diary on June 12, 1942, addressing an imaginary friend, "Ihope I will
be able to confide everything to yon, as I have never been able to confide in
anyone, and I hopeyon will be a great source of conffort and support." Frank
here follows the conventions of diary as a private "record of (secret) truth.
9 a place to relinquish control and to allow repressed material to surface
... through a 'dialogue" (Wiener and Rosenwald 1993:31, 42). She (Frank
[1947] 1993: 6-7) be ains her second entry of Saturday, June 20, 1942:
I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of
thin~ off my chest. . . . I'm n o t planning to let anyone read else read
this stiff-backed notebook grandly referred to as a "diary," unless I
should ever find a real f r i e n d . . . Now I'm back to the point that
prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don't have a friend.
9 I want this diary itself to be my friend, and I will call my friend
Kitty.
It was not until March 29, 1944, that she wrote of having public readers after
the war. She wrote:
Bolkestein, the Cabinet Miniver, speaking on the Dutch broadcast
from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of
diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course everyone pounced
on my diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be ff I were to
publish a novel about the Secret Annex. The title alone would make
people think it was a detective story. Seriously, though, ten years after
56 LAGERWEY

the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what
we ate, and what we talked about as Jews in hiding (243-244)?
Wiesel, in contrast, wrote his memoir for publication on the urging of
novelist and literary mentor Francois Mauriac because:
I sensed clearly that the time had come to begin translating ten years
of patient silence into words . . . . I felt an obligation to make my first
book an offering to a culture, an atmosphere, a climate which were
those of my childhood (Wiesel 1978: 357).
In contrast to Erie Wiesel, Anne Frank has not been the sole author of her
work. The histories of her story-publication, produclion and contro-
versy-point to her posthumous fame, but also to the lack of power, control
and authority she has had over the fate of her story. Her words have been
edited by others: her father edited the original published work, and each
translation has edited and rewritten her words to make them palatable and
acceptable to the general public. Each translation has conceded "alterations
and suppression o f ~ fore the original diary" (Rosenfeld 1991: 266).
Anne Frank does not author the ending of her own story. Her story does
not end with her words, Instead, it has many endings, all written by others.
Schnabel (1958) edited a collection of stories about Anne Frank, told by
forty-two people who had known her. Thirty years later, six women who had
known Anne Frank during the months between her last diary entry and her
death told her stories through a Dutch television film documentary and a
collection of their tales, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, now
available in English (Lindwer 1988).
Anne Frank is further removed from her own words in the stage play
"The Diary of Anne Frank." The play ends triumphantly with words, taken
out of context from her diary, "In spite of everything, I still believe that
people are good at heart" (Goodrich and Hacker 1956). Such an ending,
Rosenfeld suggests, was calculated so that "audiences would leave the
theater knowing, of course that Anne Frank had died but nevertheless feeling
that she had not been defeated" (Frank [1991] 1995: 252). 9 Anne Frank had
actually written these words in her diary on July 15, 1944, three weeks
before her August 4 arrest by the Gestapo. In context, they (Frank [ 1991 ]
1995: 332) give a less triumphal note:
It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes
rise within us, ollly to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I
haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical.
Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that
people are really good at heart.
It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of
chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed
into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will
destroy us too.
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 57

It is unfaithful to Anne Frank's story and to the memory of its victims to

suggest that hers is a story of good conquering evil, of hope in the midst of
death.
Frank ([1991] 1995: 336) made her last diary entry on Tuesday, August
1, 1944, after more than two years in hiding. This entry reflects some of the
unbearable tension of hiding and the soul-searching of an adolescent. She
wrote:
A voice within me is sobbing . . . . I get cross, then sad, and finally
end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the
good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what
I'd like to be and what I could be if...[in diary] if only there were no
other people in the world. Yours, Anne Frank.
Anne Frank cannot speak in her own defense to critics such as Bettel-
heim and Holocaust deniers. Bettelheim (1960) wrote of her death, and that
of her family, as a natural consequence of foolish decisions by the Franks to
stay together and maintain a semblance of normality throughout their time
of hiding. Holocaust deniers have seized upon her story in an attempt to
inanthentic~ the best-known story of the Holocaust. In the 1970s and early
1980s, the attacks on the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary became so
persistent that the Dutch War Doom~tation Center ran forensic tests on the
handwriting, content, and materials (paper, ink, glue) for verification. In
1984, the Center issued a 250-page report, declaring "Anne is the author of
her dimes" (translated into English in 1989). But because the diary plays
such a central role in our knowledge of the Holocaust, Holocaust deniers
continue to fabricate rmners about its authenticity, It has been left to others
to respond in word and in print to these accusations.
Anne Frank's story and her life are objects manipulated (perhaps for
gain) by others. She is outside the realm of adult issues of power and conlrol,
and remAin~ forever a child. Her writing conforms to the genres common to
women's serf-writing: letters, diaries and private journals. Ironically, while
women speak frequently in genres of self-writing, and critics traditionally
decode their texts as autobiographical, the genre of autobiography has
privileged nude writing:
When applied to texts by men "autobiographical" signals the
positively valued side of binary opposition-the self-consciously
"crafted and aesthetic." When applied to texts by women, it
aanoenccs the negativelyvah~d_ side of opposition-the "spontaneous,
natural" (Smith 1987: 16).
Part of the appeal of Anne Frank's story is the ease with which it remains
simultaneously exemplary and "other," representative and margined. Her
voice, though prominent and renowned, is nonetheless comfortably the voice
of a child and therefore speaks with little authority. Anne Frank remains
"other" at many levels: as female, Jew, Holocaust victim and child. Her
58 LAGERWEY

diary, not corresponding to the literary convention of autobiography as the

stow Ofa great man, has achieved academic attention primarily in response
to challenges to its anthentioity.

A CHAI J,ENGE

While Anne Frank's and Elie Wiesel's stories speak powerfully of the
Holocaust and make its reality accessible, I am concerned about the manner
in which we read their words. My doubts arise not from the legitimacy of
either story, but from ignoring the gendered nature not only of these two
texts but of their public and academk reception as well. An ~ burden
falls upon their words as texts that bear a disproportionate responsibility in
representing, and often introducing, the Holocaust to millions of readers.
Through the lived and written stories of Anne Frank and Erie Wiesel we
who, to use Raul Hilberg's (1988) phrase, "were not there" have borrowed
from the memories of those who were, and gained knowledge of the
Holocaust. However, we also need to examine how the reception of their
stories is socially constituted, and gender-based.
We resist totaliT~ng ideology by, in the words of Benhabib (1986: 69),
"giving back to the non-identical, to the suppressed and the dominated their
right to be," their right to speak. If we read these two canonical stories as
merely representative and universal, we follow the identity logic of fac-
tan-dehumanization, domination, oppression and genocide of all who are
deemed "other"by the dominRnt and poweffal-an identity logic which
demands conformity to templates such as race, ethnicity and gender. Such
gender-based essentialism, for instance, blinds us to the unique humanity
and worth ofindividnais and their stories. We must not demand that stories
of the Holocaus~ female or male, fit the canonical grand narratives of Anne
Frank's and Erie Wiesers lived and written life stories. Their stories are
stories Ofcourage and wisdom, but they are also particular stories of day-to-
day confusion, chaos and deat~ We mast remember that Anne Frank's lived
story ended, not with her written words, but with belrayal and death. Re-
reading Anne Frank's story and the stories of its reception invite us to listen
for the particular within the universal. Erie Wiesers story is, similarly, not
the prototypical Holocaust survivor's story, but is a story of an individual
male. Rereading both stolies invites us to listen to our own stories, and to re-
examine our temptations to remember the victim~ and survivors of the
Holocaust within our pre-existing narrative structures of gender. Such a re-
reading invites us to let their stories reshape our individual and colleztive
memories of the Holocaust and the particular humanity of its victimq.
The prominence of Anne Frank's and Erie Wiesers personal stories
places them far from the margins of Holocaust discourse. They are neither
nnmediated historical chronicles nor ima$ined fiCtiOus, neither mimetic
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 59

representations nor ephemeral nightmares. They are, in part, discourse,

personal truths and subjective presentations of self and others. They form a
l~agilebridgebetweenmcomprehensionand awareness,betweenevent and
m e m o r y . They keep t h e H o l o c a u s t " w i t h i n t h e b o t m d s o f h i s t o r y " ( H o w e
1 9 8 8 : 183). T h e s t o r i e s o f A n n e F r a n k , Erie W i e s e l a n d all H o l o c a u s t
victim~ call u p o n u s as r e a d e r s a n d listeners, to h e a r , to listen, to r e m e m b e r .

NOTES
"Thsnks 8xr duc Maria Klitoh, librarian at Kalamazoo College, for her resesxch ~ , ead
to Ruth R. Linden, Kare~ Weslra, Gerald E. Marlde aad Esthe~ Cle~on for their comments on
eadk:r dmlts ofthispalxr. K,wetptsfrom earlier ver~iom of this paper were ira=creed at the 1995
me.ctings of the America~ Sooiological Association in Wa~in~on, D.C. m d published in
Phoebe.An Interdisciplinary Journal o f Feminist ~cholanhip.

t The In~.x inoludm autobiographic, bibliosraphie~, biog'aphi~, zritical studie~, fiztion a~d
drama, ~ works, poetry, jev=aile literature, obituaries, journah, colleatiom of letters, book
reviews, and interviews.

2 Ftn'd~ s c ~ h m g rduforcod the s a l i ~ of t h ~ texts end the populsdzZion of their authors.

Perk~c~AbsZra:Zy (FirstSe.~h 1996b) from 1986-1995 cogtained one hundred end forty-fcmr
to A ~ c Frsnk, one hundred And ninet~z to Erie W i l l , and c l ~ to '~lic W i ~ l
and Nigh."
The Work/Ct~ (FitgSem~ 1996c) of On4ine Computzr Library Center (OCLC) is a record
of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libt ~ic*, induding meausm41~ from well
befete this cmtmy. This liginf, through Jmnaty 5, 1996, gives 840 references to Ante Frsak (606
of these in F~li~h), 260 for Erie Wiesel (203 of these in FJt~l~h) and twenty-elght for "Erie
~ e s c l and Night" (with twenty.eix of these in l~.,~llth).
The Book Review Digest (Fits~eatoh 1996d), from Jtmuary 1983 to December 1995, lists
dShty-two tevir far Anae Frank, sixty for Eilc Wieszi, aad seven for "Erie Win~l end Night."
Although tether ~,~q,~ehcmive, the Book Review Index began in 1965, and do~ not indudc
revlews of the cattiest works. This index indioates the relativc attzntinn bcok revicwe~ paid to
a work shortly after publioatlon. Thus, it reflezts the hnlxntance of a work around the thnc it is
peblishcd. The B o o k ~ D~geatcovers "~:u-oximstely 100 puriodicsh published in the U.S.,
Canada trod Great Britain, covering ovex 7,000 adult trod children's books each year. It inzludes
Evil,h-language fi~tion aad nonfiction."
The Modem Language Assoointion's (MLA) on4ine l i ~ - ~ w h i ~ cover "literature,
languages, linguim'~, and folklore from over 4,000 jomuds aad series published worldwide"
show fourteen rofeteaces to Anne Freak (all in Eaglish), ninety-fonr referenu= to Erie Wiesel
(eighty-three in F~pi~), m d five to "Eric Wimel and Night."
The on-line Readers' Guide to Periodical L~terature (FintSe4a~ 1996r from Sq~tmnbca-
1984 throngh ~ 1995, shows rely thirty-nine rofere~w,es to Am~ Frank, forty.zinc to Erie
W'mr.l, and only one to "Elie Wiesel and Night." Written colftes inffw,ate twenty-two artides on
Anne Frank prior to S~ptcmbcr 1984, with the first sppcar:mg in J u ~ 1952. During the same
period, Readers' Guide lists thirty.one articles on Elic Wiesel, with the first one ~ _ g in
1962, ead only one spezific4tlly rc~rlng to Night in the tltlc.
_g?.eadem'C,mde, sl:mt,,ifiaallycovering popuhtr litmaturc wriltcn in Ea~iah gtamts in contrast
to~Abstraet~ (FirstSearoh 1996f), whioh lira on-line abstracts of dissettatiom earned
at at:ctedded ~ sinc,e 1861, ead mbmitted to UMI. Both iistinge, however, show droller
patterns. Dissertation A bsrroets lists oaly thirteen dissertations on Atme Frank (all in Eaglish),
twenty-nine on Wiesel (twenty-eix of throe in F~#id~), attd three on "Wiesel attd Night."
60 LAGERWEY
In contrast,the published memoirs by three famalr adult sur~vors of Auschwitz, Delbo (I968,
1995), Fenelon (1981) and Nomberg-Przytyk (1985), some of the most articulate and powm'ful
storiesofAu~witz sm'vivon,m'r cited infi'r The Modern Lansuag e Amociation'slistings
from 1981 to December of 1995 show cse ~ for Nomberg-Przytyk, none for Fenr and only
eleven for Dr
The Amer/zan Sociologiaal Assozisfion'sTenchin8 Resom'ces Center collection of Holozauat and
genocide syllabi (Porter's 1992) shows three listings for Delbo (one for her memoir and one for
a related phy, "Who W'dlCarry the Word?"), aud three for N o m b e r g - ~ Four ofthe s/xteen
syllabi (25~ are for cotraes tmght by women. Each of these women includes memoirs or diaries
by women as required reading, as well as ~ works by women such as Fine (1990),
Arendt (1973), Dawidowicz (1975). Of the five male contributors to this collection, only one,
Lanser, a sc,hol~ of Holocaust literature, includes a woman's personal narrative of the Holocaust
, namely to Delbo's (1968) None ofUa WillRetw'n).N'meteenout of twenty-eight required
readings of mamoirs and diarim tx~ommended in this ASA publication are by men: the main
voices are male.
' An ~ form of this introdimtlon appeased in the September/Oetober 1993 i s l e of Ms.
as "Writing Our Own L i v e " Here again, Anne Frank's life, story and words resonate with an
entire generation of Western women (1993b).

s See Graves (1995) for an in-dzpthdiscussionof an alternateand controversialstagedversion of

Anne Frank's diary, written by Levin, but bam~edfrom performance in the United States due to
copyrighl r o l ~ Levin sued Goodrich and Hackett for plagiarism of his play. The two plays
bocmnr thr camter of bitter, never resulved, controversy between Meyer Lcvin and Otto Frank.
Levin's 1952 lavish front page review of Anne Frank's diary in book form in the New York Times
BookReview, was, however, pivotal in br/n~dn~,Anm: Frank's diary to fame in the United Statm.

e See Roeenfeld(1991) for a discussion of the increasing scope and intensity with which the 1989
fiftieth aaniverm~ of her birth has sparked an outpouring of media attention on "the most famous
child of the twentieth ca:ntm-y"(1991: 244). Rmenfeld also argues that Frank's story has also
powerfully entered coIleetlve memory through the play, "The Diary of Anne Frank."

' Over the past twelve ye~s, however, there have been several efforts to give inmeased end more
nuanced readings of women's stories from the Holocaust. The 1983 Conference, "Women
Surviving the Holocaust" (organized by Joan Ringeiheim and sponsored by The lnstitxtle for
Research in History in New York City), was signific,mt in tn~.uoting a feminiAt analysis of
Holocaust survivors' stones (Katz and Rinselhehn 1983).
The works of Heinemaan (1986), fine (1990), Goldenberg (1990), Linden (1993), Milton
(1984), Rittner mui Roth (1993), Ringelheim (1993, 1990, 1985, 1984) and Tec (1982, 1993),
for example,, speak powerfidly to the importance of gender in the event and scholarship of the
Holocaust. Linden (1993) is one of the most reflective and dialogic publications on women and
the Holocaust. Ringelhelm (1985, 1990) also offers a particularly insightful diszusxion of the
zomple~ in~aatlom of gentlercad etlmizity during the Holocaust and in personal narratives about
the eve~ I ~ (1992) end Slrzelezka (1994) also mention the pivotal but comple~ role gender
played throughout the Holocaust. Yet women's voic4~ remain primarily marg~al to Holocaust
canon, and "other" rather them r ~ v e (Lagerwey 1994). Women's voices in Holocaust
studies are all too frequently relegated to footnotm, a chapter in a book, a single session at a
conference or a cloistered collection of their stories.

s The phrase "as Jews" appears here in the 1995 (Frank [1991] 1995) Doubleday edition of
Frank's diary, but earlier editions omit the phrase.

9 Levin's (1967) play, Anna Frank, is by all accounts more authentic,, more specifically Jewish,
and less opt/mlo.ir than the better-known Goodrich and Hazkett (1956) version.
CONTEMPORARY JEWRY 61

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