Yes, I was enjoying a quiet day, sitting up here in my attic scrolling through 'Blogdom' and then I hit the name "Anne Frank" who is the subject of an article in Der Spiegel. That led me on to read her Wiki entry which left me, and I really do not want to sound soppy here, in a state close to tears. I should make clear that I have never read her diaries, partly because the intimacies of a very young, teenage girl held, and still hold, little interest for me but also because I knew and still know that I would be hugely distressed by her words. So, yes, good, old-fashioned, moral cowardice 'rules OK'!
There are so many examples in existence, particularly in science, where the nature of being alters depending on the focal range. For example, proteins, elements, molecules and atoms are one thing which studied en masse give one appearance of reality but sharpen the focus to the sub-atomic world and the picture changes utterly. Thus it is, I think, with human affairs like the Holocaust. I can look at it from a distance and mutter the usual pieties - and they are not hypocritical, I mean what I say, and to an extent I feel what I say. But in doing that I am emulating the boffin, or the history professor, as he draws general rules from general observations taken at a distance. With the story of Anne Frank, suddenly, you rocket downwards to the very closest of close-ups. She is of statistics but is not a statistic. Absolutely the opposite, she is herself, in all her varied aspects of being a human. To be honest, I simply cannot bring myself to, as it were, look her in the eye. Pathetic, I know, but there it is. I honor her memory. I pray that she may escape the worst attentions of both the well-meaning and the malign, and that she may continue to exist in her own right, not other people's.
In expressing her fervent desire to become a writer she used these words:
I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!
Who can read that knowing the outcome and not weep?
