Anne Frank

In 1960, Bruno Bettelheim (a psychoanalyst and himself a survivor of a Nazi internment camp) wrote and published “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank,” a critical essay. In this work, Bettelheim encourages a reinterpretation of the moral understanding, and a redirection of the resulting public sympathy, of the Anne Frank story. His main issue is “the universal and uncritical response to her diary and to the play and movie based on it, and what this reaction …

…only thirteen when they fled to the loft. Her love and respect for her father are confirmed in the diary entry that begins, “My father, the most adorable father I’ve ever seen...” (172) Anne was going to go anywhere her father would have led her. If, later, Anne had the opportunity to respond to Bettelheim’s charges, she would only have to point out that his perspective is from fifteen years later. Hindsight is always 20/20!