some thoughts on a thing ive noticed.
people (non-jews) seem to view Anne Frank as a martyr of some sort. i think this comes from a couple of perspectives and none of them are respectful or correct.
a martyr is a person who suffers or is killed for their beliefs, for what they stand for. the most famous example is probably Jesus (read "everyone's (second) favorite dead jew" from People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn). this is also seen in catholic saints, in movements surrounding political activists, and in Islamist (not Islamic, Islamism=extremist Islamic fundamentalism) groups where becoming a martyr is considered an honor. martyrdom is somewhat present in some texts in Judaism. however, it isn't a central, core part of the religion or culture of the Jewish people. It's not a thing we really talk about in the same way that Christians and Muslims do. (this is NOT me saying that Jews are better. I am just pointing out cultural differences)
Judaism does not focus on death in the same way that Christianity and Islam often do. Judaism generally focuses on how to live a good and fulfilling life and to contribute to the world while you are alive. In many other religions, there is a bigger focus on being a good person with the intent to get into heaven after death. And that's fine, I think it motivates a lot of people to truly be good to others and to the world. but that isn't what Judaism is about. we are not raised to feel sorrow for the death of a deity. we are not forced to constantly remind ourselves of our inherent original sin. the afterlife is a highly debated subject in Judaism and there are many different ideas and interpretations about it - however, we do not generally believe in hell or eternal damnation after death. we are asked to be good people in life because it's the right thing to do, not because we have to ensure a spot in heaven. in Judaism there are a lot of specific traditions around death, burial, and mourning. the key one I want to focus on is memory: we say "may their memory be a blessing" rather than "rest in peace", we spend periods of time on remembering and honoring the life and legacy of the deceased, we place stones on graves rather than flowers because flowers are temporary and rocks will last a long time. a person who has died is kept alive through memory.
I explain this so that you can understand the cultural context of people applying the idea of martyrdom to Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was a child who was slaughtered brutally by the Nazis. she was a real person, and she did not die "for a cause". she died because of her ethnicity, her perceived "race", for the fact she was a Jew. you cannot remove the fact she was a Jew from this.
she was also not a singular case. the nazis murdered countless Jewish children just like her. it just happens that her diary was saved and became one of the most commonly known primary accounts of the atrocities of the holocaust.
i am going to insert this quote from People Love Dead Jews:
"The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary are her famous words, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” These words are “inspiring,” by which we mean that they flatter us. They make us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls – and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. The gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift that lies at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank’s hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.” It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” before meeting people who weren’t. Three weeks after writing those words, she met people who weren’t."
Anne Frank did not write her diary with the intent of it being read by the general public. she did not write it to make you feel good about yourself in your white savior complex looking ass twitter posts. she did not write it to teach people in the future about morals and ethics and to be quotable. she wrote it for the same reason I wrote in a diary as a kid. to write down my thoughts and feelings and to remember my everyday life.
she was a child who was murdered for being Jewish.
do not use her name as a political talking point. she did not die for your cause. she did not die so that you could treat her as a martyr. she died because people hate Jews.
you cannot possibly claim to know what a girl who was murdered decades ago would have to say about the current political climate in a part of the world she never lived in. you cannot claim to speak for her. you cannot project your own political views onto her. you cannot use her as a symbol.
she is not a symbol. she is not a metaphor. she is not a name you can invoke to talk about other tragedies.
(Adding in at the end: no, her father did not remove her apparently talking about having a crush on a girl from the diary because he was homophobic. it was so that people didn't focus on that detail or use it to be cruel to her. and either way it's weird as fuck to talk about how a literal child who died would have defined herself sexuality wise in modern times. she never got the opportunity to decide that for herself because she was murdered as a child. kindly fuck off.)
andulkaphoto
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
origamiaround
