Mazzella, Emily. “The Child Victim as Witness to the Holocaust: An American Story?

”
Jewish Social Studies New Series,Vol. 14, No. 1 (Fall, 2007), pp. 1-22 (22
pages) Published by: Indiana University Press [accessed on November 5th,
2021]
The article “The Child Victim as Witness to the Holocaust: An American Story?”
is a scholarly article that hones in on the ways in which the holocaust is represented
through the mainstream American perspective. The argument of the author of this
article is that essentially all “breakthrough moments in non-Jewish American awareness
of the Holocaust (The Diary of Anne Frank, Wiesel's Night, the NBC television movie
Holocaust, Spielbergs Schindler's List, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.)
have highlighted the role of children, whose defenselessness serves as a metaphor for
the general plight of Holocaust victims. While rhetorically effective, the figure child victim
can also distort, personalize, and dehistoricize the Holocaust, providing a false sense of
solidarity and understanding in mainstream American audiences.” The author
represents various texts which feature children as the main characters in an effort to
support their claim. The author also presents the reader with the questions of “What are
the aesthetic and affective implications of what is, after all, a rhetorical figure
synecdoche, in which a part represents the whole? Is it a legitimate figure? Does it
simplify or distort the actual historical event? Most of all, what does it tell us about the
American reception of the Holocaust?” The author begins with addressing The Diary of
Anne Frank, specifically talking about character Anne, as well as writer Frank. The
author presents the argument that “Anne's identity as a child muted her Jewishness
from the very beginning. Unformed, still developing, and then suddenly and tragically
dead - Anne could be a Jew to Jewish audiences or simply a courageous girl whose
Judaism posed no real obstacle to those who wanted to identify with her "existentially."
It was because she was a child that even latently antisemitic American audiences of the
1950s could welcome her into their hearts while continuing to frequent restricted hotels
and country clubs. If a bearded Polish rabbi or a wealthy German-Jewish businessman
had written a comparable memoir (and many did), would big-name publishers,
Broadway producers, and Hollywood moguls have rushed to make their stories known?”
It is due to Writer Frank and Character Anne both being children, that allows her story to
penetrate barriers of all sorts, specifically barriers of antisemitism that can be found
within America. The author then goes on to compare Eli Wiesel’s novel Night to Anne
Frank’s diary. The author expresses that even though Wiesel’s “child” in the novel is 16
years of age, and claimed to be 18 as an effort to save his life when in Auschwitz,
“Wiesel repeatedly refers to himself not as an adolescent or youth but as a "child," an
"enfant" - a choice in vocabulary that brings out his symbolic defenselessness. Wiesel
wrote Night at the age of 30 and could have adopted this adult perspective to narrate
the events that had taken place some 10 to 15 years earlier.” It is this same idea of the
child lens that ties Anne Frank and Eli Wiesel together, as both their stories hone in on
the purity and clarity that a child’s vision contains, and utilize this to craft their horrific
experiences during the Holocaust. The author concludes that even despite Anne
Frank’s diary being told in current day to day events, written as each day passed- and
Eli Wisel’s novel retrospectively, it is through them both being told in the perspective of
children that the message can be received from even the most antisemtic of americans,
as death of a child’s life and innocence is simply too brutal a reality for anyone to bare.
Mazzella, Emily. “Challenging Characters: Learning to Reach Inward and Outward from
Characters Who Face Oppression” The English Journal Vol. 102, No. 1
(September 2012), pp. 48-51 (4 pages) Published by: National Council of
Teachers of English [accessed on November 8th, 2021]

The article “Challenging Characters: Learning to Reach Inward and Outward

from Characters Who Face Oppression” is a scholarly articles that’s focal point is all
about the ways in which the novel The Diary of Anne Frank transcends the time it was
written, and is connected to everyone on the planet. The argument of this text is that
Anne Frank’s diary upon closer reading even within youth demonstrates that “many of
these students share with Anne Frank an understanding of the importance of family;
having secrets one must hide; being in an environment where you can feel trapped; and
how sometimes hope is the only thing that a person can count on to survive and get
himself or herself out of a bad situation.” The article also ties in the texts Am I Blue?
and A Child Called "It", and expresses how all three texts are connected, as well as how
these texts connect to individuals experiencing life today- even if the circumstances of
the individuals reading the text are not the same as Anne Frank’s. The article also
emphasizes that novels such as The Diary of Anne Frank transcend cultural differences,
gender differences, sexuality differences, etc, due to its nature of hope being the thing
that connects us all as a planet. The article then goes on to elaborate what the unifying
factors between the reader and character Anne are- in essence, what lessons can we
take from her story, and how does her story prove relevant to even our own individual
lives as people who did not experience the horrors of the holocaust. The article states
“Shivani and several others in my class highlighted the source of Anne's hope as her
focus on life after the war, when everything would return to normal. Anne would return
to
her friends, home, and former life. If Anne and her family were not discovered, the
promise of life outside returning to the way it was before the war was enough to keep
her alive.” One argument presented is that it is Character Anne’s hope for the future that
connects us as readers to examining the own oppression and adversities we face in our
own lives, and that is how the novel transcends all borders of differences in individual
lives. In short, we are universally united to Character Anne in the way we as individuals
maintain hope for the future when enduring adversity. However, the author then
continues by stating “In contrast to hope in the future, Francine chose to situate Anne's
hope on staying in the present: "Even though I'm living a frustrated life, I can't give up
on how I am living my life. All I have to do is NOT think about 'what if this and 'what if'
that because if I do, our hope will slowly die out and everything will be ruined and I
don't want that!" For Francine, Anne was able to maintain hope by not focusing on what
might happen should the family get caught. Despite the frustration of the situation in the
annex, Anne persevered in her existence because she continued to try to live her life
as best she could despite her circumstances.” The article then concludes that even
among youth, the most poignant message of the novel is “By maintaining hope and
making the best of the situation she was faced with, Anne was able to keep her belief
that ‘in spite of it all, I still believe people are good at heart.’" (Goodrich and Hackett
237). The article then concludes by expressing the sentiment that continuing to read
and teach The Diary of Anne Frank is essential in regards of demonstrating to youth
how we all truly are connected as humans, especially in how we face adversity.
Mazzella, Emily. “The Holocaust and Jewish Identity in America: Memory, the Unique,
and the Universal Jewish Social Studies” Vol. 18, No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 100-135 (36
pages) Published by: Indiana University Press [accessed on November 11th, 2021]

The article The Holocaust and Jewish Identity in America: Memory, the Unique,
and the Universal Jewish Social Studies focuses on the argument that the
Holocaust,
though a global event and tragedy, is one that has served as an integral element
in the
formation of Jewish- American identity. The argument is then expounded upon by
the
author of the article expressing how it is the way in which americans have
“americanized” the Holocuast, that has then caused it to become such a large
part of
Jewish- Americans’ identity. The article works to explore “American Jewish
identity from
three vantage points: the institutionalization of the Holocaust as part of American
history
and as a Jewish “event” in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
D.C.,
the Holocaust as seen through the lens of various recent readings of The Diary
of Anne
Frank, and the image of the Holocaust in American popular culture. The article
expresses how America, among other countries have in some ways put Anne
Frank’s
diary as one of the sole ways to put perspective on the atrocities of the
Holocaust-
reducing the diary down to the message of the young girl who remained hopeful,
and it
is her optimism of life even in the worst of times that keeps her story alive today.
This
may hold true for many, the way in which it shapes Jewish- American identity
though,
expounds beyond this- and is rooted in the various versions of her diary. The
author
states, “I limit my comments to two essays by Alvin Rosenfeld, “Popularization
and
Memory: The Case of Anne Frank” and “Anne Frank and the Future of Holocaust
Memory.” In both essays Rosenfeld argues that the various depictions of Anne
Frank, in
both America and Europe, are guilty of what he calls historical “distortions”
resulting
from the presentation of Anne as a heroic figure whose outlook remained
optimistic
through the utter tragedy of genocide, as opposed to Anne the victim of Nazi
genocide
who withered away and died in Bergen-Belsen only weeks before its liberation.
Cynthia
Ozick wrote that the universalization of Anne is so distasteful that it might have
been
better had the diary been “burned, vanished, lost.” The author then expresses
what is at
stake with this various distortions of Anne Frank’s story is that it universalizes her
experience, which is not negative persay, but does run the risk of erasing the true
brutal
and horrific nature of the Holocaust, and threatens to distort what it truly can
mean to
some to be a Jewish- American. The author then expresses that yes, Anne
should be
universalized and revered for her incredible optimism as a young child in such
horrific
times, but that should be revered in a way that does not work to distort and
dehistoricize
the Holocaust as a global tragedy, that shaped the history of Jewish- Americans
we
know today. The author then concludes by expressing that Anne’s diary should
also be
viewed as the way she wrote her own history, not the collective experience of all
Jewish
people who endured the tragedies of the Holocuast (as she did after all write her
diary
with no intent of it serving as one of the largest literary texts on the Holocaust). “It
is
what we call art (good or bad being a matter of opinion). And art, though not
history, is
not by definition antihistorical either. Perhaps Anne’s more universal rendering is
partly
due to more receptive audiences for such universalization. Iconic figures such as
Anne
Frank are creations of the times. Alvin Rosenfeld’s Anne is no less socially
constructed
than the universal Anne of the multiethnic, de-essentialized American Jew.”