Before touring the Anne Frank exhibition at New York’s Center for Jewish History (CJH), I decided to do background research. That is, I read the definitive edition of “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” for the first time.

As a Jew and a writer with my own journal project, I had always known about Anne and her diary. I knew about the controversies, the spin-offs into theater and film, and museum exhibits about her (I’d tried to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 2016 but no times were open). I’d read the diary of another Jewish teen, Renia Spiegel, as well as memoirs by Viktor Frankl and Elie Wiesel. Anne’s book, however, in all its adolescent insights, hopes and despair, remained unexplored.

The exhibit had a reconstruction of  the secret annex where Anne and seven others hid from 1942 to 1944, when a Gestapo agent and Dutch toadies raided the annex. Finally, I could sense the claustrophobic quarters of bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen/living room where Anne, her parents, sister Margo and other residents clustered, bickered, sulked, laughed, played board games and felt the terror of unknown knocks on the door.

The story moved to its inevitable conclusion of arrest and deaths of all annex occupants except her father Otto Frank, who survived, along with the destruction of most of Dutch Jewry.

At that point, the exhibit became less familiar and more compelling. I knew how their lives ended; how did Anne’s afterlife unfold?

The more I learned about the posthumous arc of Anne’s diary, the more I marveled at everything that had to happen for Anne to not just achieve global fame and impact, but to have any........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)