Who owns Anne Frank?

Widely read novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick posed the question to an audience at the Guild Lounge of Scott Hall on Thursday. She spoke for the American Studies series “Great Authors on Great Books” to a standing-room-only crowd of Northwestern students and community members.

Ozick, author of “The Puttermesser Papers,” read excerpts of her essay “Who Owns Anne Frank?” which has been published in The New Yorker and most recently in her new book “Quarrel and Quandary.”

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who was forced to go into hiding with her family and others during the Holocaust to avoid capture by the Nazis. While in hiding, Frank kept a now-famous diary of her experiences. Unlike the diary, Frank did not survive the Holocaust; she died in a concentration camp.

Ozick said that many people act as if they own Anne Frank. After Frank’s father, Otto, read her diary, he said he did not know his daughter. He later said he knew what she meant by certain statements in her diary, Ozick said.

In addition, children worldwide who have read Frank’s diary have reduced her story of persecution to one of the trials of adolescence, Ozick said, adding that the diary “lacks meaning for a new generation.”

If children are given the diary without other information, they will think it was exciting to hide during the Holocaust, Ozick said. She said she is upset by the way in which the diary has been portrayed.

“The pure has been made impure,” she said. “The diary is not a genial document.” She continued that its reputation for being uplifting is “nonsensical.”

“The diary is a chronicle of turmoil, trepidation, and alarm,” Ozick said.

Ozick listed many people who have altered the message of Frank’s diary, including Otto Frank. The girl’s father did not speak about Frank but rather for her, Ozick said.

“Fatherhood does not confer surrogacy,” Ozick said.

Otto Frank was an accessory in changing the diary from “painfully revealing to partially concealing,” Ozick said. He emphasized Frank’s spirit and not the evils that happened to her. Otto Frank also edited sexual, religious and other content from the diary, helping create its false image in today’s society, Ozick said.

The Broadway play “The Dairy of Anne Frank,” which premiered in 1955, also helped distort the diary’s image, Ozick said. She read a review from the New York Daily News that said the Jewish content had been replaced in the play, making Frank seem like Little Orphan Annie.

Ethel Fenig, a Chicago resident who attended the lecture, said Ozick was “right on target.” She is asking questions and “giving answers that people don’t want to hear,” Fenig said.

Added Courtney Ries, a Medill freshman: “By divulging into these topics further is the only way we reveal our own ignorance and misunderstandings.”