© 2002 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Memory by Way of Anne Frank: Enlightenment and Denial Among West Germans, Circa 1960
1 University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Beginning in the late 1950s, West Germans made one particular Holocaust victim the focus not only of remembrance and mourning, but of an uneasy discussion of German guilt. Understanding the Holocaust by way of Anne Frank, though practiced the world over, took unique forms in the Federal Republic, where her diary gained unprecedented popularity. Yet some critics feared that excessive attention to the girl's story distracted from larger moral questions and turned her into a figure whose role was to excuse the German nation of its Nazi past. An analysis of Ernst Schnabel's 1958 book, Anne Frank: Spur eines Kindes, and its reception in West Germany provides a glimpse into the tensions and ambiguities that complicated German attempts to "come to terms with the past."