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Experts offer context for theater’s production of ‘Anne Frank’
The story of Anne Frank fed the notion that the Dutch did more to help the Jews during the Holocaust than other European nations.
But Bernard Weinstein, professor of English and Holocaust studies at Kean University in Union, dispelled that as a myth in favor of a harder truth.
“Seventy-five percent of the [Dutch] Jews were killed,” said Weinstein, speaking Feb. 21 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn. “Poland had as high a death rate.”
Separating myth from fact — and the aura of the theater’s acclaimed production of The Diary of Anne Frank from the real-life experiences of the doomed Dutch girl — was the goal of a panel discussion with two area experts on the Shoa.
Weinstein was joined by Daniel A. Harris, professor emeritus of English and Jewish studies at Rutgers University and founder of the education program Jewish Voices: 200 Years of Poetry in English.
The two offered historical and literary context for the Diary — which closed Feb. 26 — for an audience of about 50. The evening was cosponsored by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
Harris discussed poems by Lyn Lifshin, Irena Klepfisz, and Annette Bialik Harchik, focusing on recurring themes of women in community and relationships with one another and with children, as well as the apparent breakdown of grammar and language that mirrored the destruction of the Jewish people, its culture, and traditions.
A highlight of his talk was the lively discussion he facilitated on the Harchik poem “Earrings.” Less gruesome, harrowing, or graphic than poems by Lifshin and Klepfisz, it nonetheless offered a tale of lives cut short and a culture destroyed.
The poem offers a depiction of a tradition of different earrings worn by women throughout their lives; the tradition abruptly ends in the third of four stanzas: “When the trains pulled up/ at Auschwitz /my mother was stripped, shorn/ and tattooed, leaving behind her earrings/ in a huge glittering pile of jewelry.” By the end of the next stanza, the mother is a survivor with “wavy white hair,” whose “lobes hang heavy,/ the empty holes/ grown shut.”
Weinstein, who also heads the program in Holocaust and genocide studies at Kean, followed the poetry by reading from a text. It offered statistics about the numbers of Jews in Holland at different points in history. He pointed out that Jews took part in a full civic life in Holland, were elected to public office, and got involved in a workers’ movement. “By the time of the German occupation, there were 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands…and 75,000 in Amsterdam.”
He began to recite the chronology of the German occupation of Holland, pointing out that the Dutch army capitulated after only four days and that the Dutch royalty fled to Great Britain.
“Holland was a mixed bag,” Weinstein said. “There were antagonisms between the Jews and the Dutch. It was not black or white. My reading suggests to me there were many incidents of rescues, but there were many who were anti-Jewish. The Dutch Nazis were jealous of the Germans taking over. They wanted to get rid of the Jews themselves.”
In addition, he added, attempts at resistance were difficult due to the geography of Holland as well as the timing of its occupation. “There was a resistance movement but the problem was location. Holland was surrounded by other countries already occupied and by the North Sea.”
Another audience member pointed out that there was also nowhere to hide, with much of the country below sea level and no forests to offer cover. Still, there was a sense of disbelief as Weinstein repeated the statistics. “You have to accept that [Anne Frank’s] is just one story. 75 percent of the Jews there were lost.”
In addition to the evening presentation, Ursula Pawel, former longtime Maplewood resident and Holocaust survivor, related her experiences during the Nazi era in an afternoon talk also held at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Pawel’s experiences are captured in her book, My Child Is Back.
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