The Veneration of Anne Frank: Problems with the Oversimplification of Antisemitism
By Annette Honey Hochstadt
Recently, the AU Center for Diversity and Inclusion welcomed the Anne Frank Center into the basement of the Bender Library. The exhibit focuses on the story of Frank’s life and encourages viewers to be upstanders. When announcing the arrival of the traveling exhibit, AU’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Amanda Taylor said, “What really struck me…is the way it really situates the story of the Holocaust, that is really the story of the emergence of antisemitism,” (The Eagle). Anne Frank is an important historical figure whose story deserves recognition, but her life is but one story of the Holocaust. It is not the story of antisemitism as a whole.
Often in American collective memory, the atrocities of the Holocaust shine so brightly, we are blinded to other instances of antisemitism. Antisemitism did not begin in the 1940s with the Holocaust or the 1480s with the Spanish Inquisition. It is a complex hatred that has spanned millennia and a history often erased by its simplification into the more easily digestible story of the Holocaust. VP Taylor’s statement is oversimplified and dangerous. The truth is written on the wall and the swastikas are written on the bathroom ceiling.
Dara Horn notes this phenomenon in her book People Love Dead Jews, criticizing our American obsession with the Holocaust and the harm of this obsession to real living Jews of today. Current antisemitism pedagogy is misleading, allowing individuals and organizations to believe that abolishing Jewish hate revolves around Holocaust education alone. When this simplification is made, all other types of antisemitism are erased and dismissed.
Jews, too, are guilty of this blind spot, pouring more and more money into Holocaust museums and middle school curriculums. While this is an important and worthy endeavor, the assumed correlation between an increase in Holocaust education and a decrease in antisemitic incidents does not exist. In fact, as Holocaust education grows, the amount of Jewish hate has grown with it (this is not to say the education caused this hate, but only that it has not mitigated or prevented it like many believe that it can do).
As we learn from this exhibit, let us acknowledge the atrocities of the Holocaust. Let us mourn the loss of human life and culture. But let us not assume the exhibit will stop the frequent antisemitic incidents on campus. Let’s not praise the university for its efforts against antisemitism. Antisemitism did not die with Anne Frank or the countless other victims of the Holocaust. Ending Jewish hatred at AU is a continuous process that someday we will achieve. This exhibit, however, is not yet that achievement.