Introduction: Autobiographic Comics and the Holocaust

Numerous scholarly publications, academic articles, and college/university curricula, alongside autobiographic bestsellers and award-winning graphic novels, such as Persepolis (Satrapi), I am Malala (Yousafzai), and Zlata’s Diary (Filipović) to name only few, are irrefutable proof that comics/graphic novels have evolved into a complex and powerful literary form. As predicted, the renowned cartoonist Will Eisner, who coined the term graphic novel, observed that this genre “addressed subjects of greater moment” and should be considered worthy of “serious intellectual review” (xi). Indeed, the wide range of the genre’s topics includes personal or fictional testimonies of violations of civil rights, gender issues, and narratives of displacement and immigration, as well as genocide and Holocaust accounts.

The roots of such auto- or fictive confessional comics can be traced to Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1968), which exposes a tense and poignant father-son relationship against the background of the author’s father’s testimony of his Auschwitz survival. This intergenerational exposure encouraged Holocaust survivors and “second-generation” comic artists to express how they cope with the traumatic past. Holocaust survivor Miriam Katin reconstructs her experiences as a two-year-old child in occupied Hungary, while “second-generation” artists such as Bernice Eisenstein and Michael Kovner confront and challenge their parents’ Holocaust legacies. Alongside autographic confessions, there are abundant comic books narrating various chapters of World War II history through fictional or historical figures. Famous Jewish American comic artist Joe Kubert’s what-if story, Yossel, recounts the Warsaw Ghetto uprising through the prism of a fifteen-year-old fictional protagonist, Yossel, who could have plausibly been the author himself, had not his parents left Poland in1926 and immigrated with their young child to the USA (Kubert, introduction). Another authentic/fictive mélange can be seen in Pascal Croci’s Auschwitz; despite being based on historical events and on camp survivors’ testimonies, it is narrated by a fictional survivor couple, recollecting their past while awaiting (in 1993) their fatal destiny in the former Yugoslavia. In presenting authentic World War II first-hand testimonies or fictional narratives, graphic novels are turned into agents of Holocaust memory.

Holocaust’s Comics as a Pedagogical Tool

The popularity of graphic novels has made teens, teachers, and scholars agree that the use of “well-chosen ones in the classroom … initiate conversations about racism, social justice, war, and global conflict” (Christensen 227), an argument that might explain the increasing use of graphic novels in teaching the Holocaust to twenty-first-century youth. This tendency raises polemical reactions: opponents claim that the marriage of the Holocaust with humor, irony, and comic books might be regarded as disrespectful or even profane (Lipman) and that those horrendous events are too serious to be treated lightly (Ashenfelter). Yet, in light of the seriousness that characterizes a growing number of World War II graphic novels, it seems that a consensus is gradually being reached: “As graphic novels have evolved as an artistic medium and attained critical acclaim, they have become one of the media with which younger generations grasp the inner struggles of [Holocaust] characters and the sanctity of life” (Lipman).

Educators and scholars point out additional aspects inherent in this medium that reinforce the importance of its effectiveness as a pedagogical tool. Eisner comments that the “format of comics presents a montage of both word and image, and the reader is thus required to exercise both visual and verbal interpretative skills”; hence reading them “is an act of both aesthetic perception and intellectual pursuit” (2). Evans states that deciphering a fused text, contrary to the linear step-by-step reading of a traditional book, requires a multitasked effort involving “aesthetic perception and intellectual pursuit … which usually displays a high degree of creativity and innovation and which isn’t always easy to understand at first glance” (241). Thus “graphic novels … exemplify the visual digital world for digital-age young people, who are accustomed to reading the gaps, filling in the blanks, and attending to the visual as well as the verbal” (Glasgow 42). Contemporary youths’ reading habits might explain the increasing popularity of Holocaust graphic novels among adolescents and their prevalence in school curricula.

The effectiveness of this genre in history teaching can be summarized by the words of Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which has published Holocaust graphic novels: “Teenagers are much more likely to read a comic book than a 300-page history book, and I say that as the author of more than a few 300-page history books” (Medoff qtd. in Gustines).

Graphic Novel Predecessors to Anne Frank: A Family Secret and The Search

Despite the unique adaptation of The Diary of a Young Girl into a graphic novel by the Amsterdam-based Anne Frank House, it is not the only Holocaust graphic novel produced by this institution. The two fictional graphic novels A Family Secret (Heuvel) and its sequel The Search (Heuvel et al.), published in the Netherlands in 2003 and 2007 respectively, might be considered its precursors. Both publications, created by renowned Dutch comics artist Eric Heuvel, with the cooperation of the Amsterdam-based Anne Frank House, originated as pedagogic tools; they are embedded in Dutch history during World War II and depict the Jewish German refugees’ persecution vis-à-vis the different attitudes of the non-Jewish population. A Family Secret narrates the close relationship between Esther Hecht, a German-Jewish refugee, and her Dutch neighbor, Helena van Dort.. Helena’s father, a policeman and a Nazi sympathizer, despite taking an active part in Esther’s parents’ deportation, not only refrained from turning Esther in to Nazi authorities, but also assisted her in finding shelter, thus risking his job, his family, and his life, for helping a Jew. Those reminiscences from the dark past are disclosed by present-day Helena, triggered by her grandson’s questions, which followed his finding of an old photograph of her and Esther. Alongside the tragic fate of Esther’s family (who failed to find a haven in the Netherlands), the book recounts the conflicting feelings of Helena’s family members, torn and divided between resistance, rescue, and Nazi collaboration. While Family Secret is narrated from a Dutch point of view, The Search’s protagonist is Esther, who revisited Amsterdam and reunited with Helena several decades after World War II. Esther recounts her rescue by Helena’s father and Dutch farmers, who hid her during the Holocaust.

As can be seen, the books complement each other, showing the two sides of the painful story of the Netherlands under Nazi occupation, not as a black-and-white world but rather a complex one tinged with various shades of grey. Visually and verbally, both comics narrate a fusion of past and present, graphically represented by their protagonists; while reflecting on their past, both Helena and Esther are depicted as elderly women situated in the upper part of the panels, observing their reminiscences “below,” as youngsters—forming an integral part of the storyboards. This double point of view breaks the linear reading, and requires careful attention. However, since the graphics are clear and well rendered, they “leave no room for ambiguity as to who is who or what time period they depict” (The Children’s War). A Family Secret and The Search present an accurate account of Amsterdam under the Occupation, thus preparing the background for Anne Frank’s Diary’s graphic novel, published three years after The Search.

The Diary of Anne Frank: A Graphic Novel

The adaptation of Anne Frank’s life and Diary into a sequential art medium was done by veteran American comics artists, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón. It was commissioned by the Anne Frank House following their 2006 best seller, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. The resulting work, which was published in 2010, reveals an exhaustive, rich account that goes far beyond the limits of the iconic diary’s entries from June 1942 to August 1944. Two-thirds of the 160 pages, occurring prior to and after the Diary’s chronology, are loosely based on Anne’s writings, and rely more heavily on archival and historical sources.

Contrary to A Family Secret and The Search, Anne Frank’s comic is mostly narrated linearly with few flashbacks and no protagonists who are both witnesses and historians, yet the Franks’ private odyssey is similarly embedded and contextualized in World War II events, inserted as “snapshots”—and employing maps, graphs, diagrams, documents, and photographs illustrating the historical facts.

Anne Frank’s Graphic Diary: A Framed Tragedy

The graphic novel’s concept partly resembles an Aristotelian tragedy; despite the fact that many readers are aware of Anne’s fate (similar to the ancient Greek audience who were familiar with the plots of the classic tragedies), the artists skillfully invoke the classic tragedy’s basic feelings of “fear” and “pity” (Aristotle 1951, 42). The readers are terrified that the refugees will be discovered, and experience deep sorrow about the fates of Anne, Margot, and Edith. Though the graphic novel does not strictly follow Aristotelian rules, there is structural semblance. Anne Frank’s exposition (chapters 1-5: 3-63) introduces and presents the protagonists and their background: the Franks’ marriage, life in Germany, the rise of Nazism and the move to Amsterdam. The central “act” (chapters 6-8: 64-113), based on the Diary, narrates life in the Annex and leads the alarmed reader to the climax—the discovery—that takes place in the following chapter. The final “act” (chapter 9: 114-130) narrates the tragic post-Diary events in accelerated rhythm, following the protagonists to their tragic end in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The epilogue (chapter 10: 131-142) presents the revelation (the finding of the Diary) and the catharsis and so perpetuates Anne’s spirit through her humane universal message.

Otto Frank: ‘Super-Father’

From the very beginning of the graphic novel (Jacobson and Colón 3-64), Otto Frank’s presence is highlighted. His studies in Heidelberg University, his apprenticeship in New York’s Macy’s, interrupted due to his father’s death, and his return to Frankfurt to assist his family, portray him as an educated and worldly young man loyal to familial duties. His bravery and dignity are in turn shown in his military career during World War I, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross (7, 8). The exposition’s portrayal of Otto’s virtue and courage shapes and reinforces his image as a super-father (Gunderman 228), as is subsequently supported by both Anne’s idolizing prism and his insatiable zeal to execute his daughter’s “greatest wish … to be a famous writer” (C 294), which/whose result far exceeds Anne’s expectations.

The Diary, the Annex and the Tree: The Diary’s ‘Found Objects’

Anne Frank’s Diary, the Annex, and the Horse Chestnut Tree are the material anchors “Onto which,” in the young girl’s story, “Anne projected her feelings, hopes and fears” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 327). Since in the course of time all three attained the status of iconic symbols, it is not surprising that those tangible “found objects” play a crucial role in the graphic novel’s imagery, weaving and intertwining through the texture of the protagonist’s life and myth.

The Diary

The red-and-white-plaid album appears in the graphic novel in eleven different instances: six in the central chapters based on her Diary (“The Dairy,” “The Eight Hiders,” and “The New Year,” Jacobson and Colón 64-113) and five in the final chapters (“Discovery” and “The Story Lives On,” 114-141). The album’s first appearance (65) occurs on the occasion of Anne’s thirteenth birthday, dating from “the moment I got you, the moment I saw you lying on the table among my other birthday presents,” as she writes in June 14, 1942 (C 1). The smiling young Anne, as depicted in the graphic novel, holds it closely, hoping she will be able “to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support” (C 1). Once its invaluable role is established, it is no wonder that when the Franks are forced to change their plans and move to the Annex (July 8, 1942), “the diary was of course the first thing Anne packed” (Jacobson and Colón 69), thus turning it into an invaluable “transitional object.”

Deborah Anne Sosin notes that adolescents’ diaries, apart from providing an intellectual activity, serve as an “emotional component and development function in the diary-diarist relationship” (92). She adds that “the teenage diary becomes a safe, private, all accepting partner—which facilitates the passage into adulthood” (93). These are all qualities that in Anne’s turbulent and unstable life gain in importance, since her transitional phase of adolescence in the new dwelling is characterized by a profound solitude and an extreme lack of safety and privacy, as is depicted throughout the graphic novel.

With the arrival of the eighth hider, the dentist Fritz Pfeffer (Dussel), Anne’s annoying roommate, life in the Annex becomes increasingly unbearable for her. Since none of the adults takes her complaints seriously, she confides in her only “source of comfort and support” while “having to lie in bed,” narrating her “Sunday morning ordeals” (Jacobson and Colón 101).

In her essay “The Role of Attachment in Female Adolescent Development,” Joan Berzoff discusses the importance of “friendship with an imagined other in whom the adolescent confides herself and through whom she learns about herself” (119) and suggests that in Anne Frank’s case, the diarist’s imaginary friend mirrored aspects of herself and provided her with self-knowledge. These assertions can be seen in various instances, such as the Diary entry of Tuesday, March 7, 1944, when Anne confides her infatuation with Peter to her imaginary friend Kitty and shares her feelings about her own change from “a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl” (C 209) into a mature teenager, who wishes to do things her own way.

As part of her growing self-assured independence, she proclaims that she can manage “completely and totally” without her mother, since “I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right” (C 210, 211). The continual tension between mother and daughter, as well as the generational gap, is visualized in a panel showing Anne and Edith seated parallel to each other; even geometrically, they can never meet (Jacobson and Colón 103). Anne, who confides in Kitty that, unlike her mother, she lives only for love, is depicted in the front, hugging her Diary, whereas Edith is in the background, seated on her bed, introverted and isolated, with no transitional object or imaginary friend to console her.

The final two graphic novel chapters, beyond the Diary’s scope—the hiders’ internment and the posthumous epilogue—reveal its transformation from a young girl’s intimate-confessional companion into an enshrined museum piece. By following the sequence of its various stages—the Diary’s infamous violation by the Nazis, its preservation by Miep, its handing over to Otto, and its display in a glass case in the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam—Jacobson and Colón draw attention to its transformation from a mundane object into a cultural icon (117, 118, 134, 140, 141).

Two final scenes unfold the Diary’s legacy (see figs. 1 a-b) (140-141).

Figs. 1 a-b, The Anne Frank Authorized Graphic Biography, pp. 140-141

To the left (see Fig. 1a), a full-page panel depicts a colored image of the aged Otto seated in an armchair and reading his daughter’s original diary, while Anne, emerging from the past, in a black-and-white image, inspired by a canonic photograph, gazes beyond. Transmitting Anne’s legacy not only keeps her eternally young and alive, but also gives Otto’s postwar life invaluable meaning: “I am nearly 90 … but the duty Anne left me continues to give me new strength—to fight for reconciliation and human-rights throughout the world” (140). The sequential page (see Fig. 1b) (141) displays the Diary at the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam not as a mummified exhibit; instead, it focuses on the Diary as the exhibition’s highlight, which stirs the museum visitors’ movements, raises their curiosity and functions “as the heart around which the rest of the installation is given” (Young 136). Hence the Diary is an ongoing tangible legacy and a material memory; at the 1960 official opening of the Anne Frank House Museum and International Youth Center, Otto Frank attested:

263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam: From Office to Shelter to Museum

Depictions of the Annex at 263 Prinsengracht not only trace the Franks’ route in Amsterdam but also unfold the myth of Anne Frank. The reader is first introduced to the Annex in a double-spread page (Jacobson and Colón 50-51): the left depicts the building from a high vantage point; though described as part of Otto Frank’s company edifice, the composition and its grey-brown coloring convey a somewhat hideous impression; the sequential page presents a colored architectural drawing revealing the entire inner and outer building plan, including the Annex. The accompanying text tints the drawing with an ominous meaning, alluding to the future occupants of the empty space: “part of the annex was sublet to a pharmacist friend … the remaining rooms and the attic of the annex remained empty” (51).

While the Franks hastily move to the assumed haven, the Annex is depicted from the outside in a somber black-grey-white drawing, which (in a practice repeatedly employed by the artists) is based on an archival photograph (72). The building has in front a non-welcoming ‘no-entry’ street sign; a zoom-in on the Annex’s chart provides information about the tenants’ locations. Contrary to the previous horizontal, colored plan, depicting the interior of the Opteka offices (51), the hiders’ cramped attic is monochromatic, with closed, almost sealed windows, conferring a claustrophobic, suffocating feeling (72). A six-panel page that depicts a brown-ocher-grey blurred and unfocused interior, as grasped by the newly arrived fugitives, who are trying to adjust to their new circumstances (74) (see Fig. 2) captures the escapees’ destabilized sensation that not only symbolizes their unstable situation but also predicts their false beliefs in the Annex as a solid asylum.

Fig. 2. The Anne Frank Authorized Graphic Biography, p. 74

On February 3, 1944, Anne reports to Kitty the fugitives’ comments concerning the alarming news that Germany might flood Amsterdam if the Allies invade the Netherlands (C 180). This phantasmagoric speculation is portrayed by the image of a floating building in flooded, deserted Prinsengracht Street. The uncanny image alludes to Noah’s Ark, yet, contrary to the biblical catastrophe, only one of the Ark/Annex’s fugitives would survive the deluge, to offer the world an ‘olive branch’ in the guise of Anne’s humanitarian and optimistic message. The panel that concludes the graphic novel’s Diary chapters portrays the Annex, partly hidden by the chestnut tree, as if attempting to hide the architecture and its habitants (see Fig. 4) (Jacobson and Colón 113). Yet to no avail. The successive page—“the Discovery” (114) asserts that the presumed shelter eventually became a death trap. According to Victoria Stewart, the Diary’s various depictions of the Annex, be they exterior or interior, can be considered an un-homey haunted house. Stewart asserts: “it is difficult to say who is doing the haunting … some of the diary’s most tense moments … are those when the families have to take special precautions not to be heard by the workers, or the intruders, in the main part of the building,” thus turning the refugees into inmates. Although they “chose this incarceration … of course it is barely a choice at all - and it is still incarceration” (Stewart 104-105).

The Annex as an agent of Anne Frank’s memory is one of the protagonists of the final chapter, “The Story Lives On.” Its first representation is a black-and-white panel, based on an archival photograph, in which Otto Frank guides playwrights Albert Hacket and Frances Goodrich though the Annex, during their visit to Amsterdam while writing the first play based on Anne Frank’s Dairy (Jacobson and Colón 137). That play, which premiered on Broadway on October 5, 1955, was not only a worldwide success but also played a major role in later adaptations of Anne’s diary into other media such as film, ballet and theater, which in turn conferred uncontested iconic status on its protagonist.

Following the establishment of The Anne Frank Foundation in 1957, the Annex was opened officially to the public in 1960. The hiding place/museum space, as depicted in the graphic novel in a monochrome sepia-like image (again, inspired by an archival photo) (Jacobson and Colón 139), is intentionally void of any furniture or decoration, following Otto Frank’s concept, related in 1962: “During the war everything was removed and I want it to remain as it is” (Frank qtd. in Quinn 50). The void envisioned by Otto Frank actually reflects the Annex after the aggressive and barbaric invasion on August 4, 1944, and the disclosure of the hiders. Hence, it reflects the final phase of life in hiding, a phase not written by the diarist, who penned the last entry four days earlier.

Yet, part of the following spread presents a full color page depicting part of the contemporary, renovated Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, re-inaugurated in 2001. Contrary to the previous barren and austere space, the current one is furnished with showcases and other display fixtures and is crowned by Anne Frank’s plaid Diary. (see Fig. 1b) (Jacobson and Colón 141). Contemporary displays reflect the curators’ dilemma, struggling between Otto Frank’s mandate and “their desire to update it conventionally … with models and reconstructed photographs [that] strain the boundary of fidelity to Otto Frank’s wishes” (Quinn 50). These incursions into the barren space were probably justified by the need to adapt the ‘original state’ to the twenty-first century and to the House’s increasing number of visitors.

Hence the graphic novel presents the Annex’s transformation: from an architectural structure that served as Otto Frank’s workplace into a hiding/incarcerating place, until its enshrinement as a museum/relic, not only preserving Anne Frank’s memory but also maintaining and updating her story and legacy and keeping it relevant to twenty-first-century youth through new initiatives, like this graphic novel itself.

The Horse Chestnut Tree

Being such a potent symbol, the tree, unsurprisingly, has gained its own life in the last decade. When Amsterdam authorities wanted to cut down the ailing old chestnut tree in 2007, public protests hindered them; however, the once-sturdy tree blew down in 2010. Yet this was not its swan song. Saplings from the tree were distributed all over the globe, including several to the United States, where they were replanted in parks, museums and Holocaust remembrance centers, as a symbol of tolerance, part of a project led by the American Anne Frank Center (E. Katz, “Anne Frank’s Tree” 283).

As a dynamic metaphor, it is no wonder that the tree’s appearances in the graphic novel accompany significant moments in Anne’s confessional biography. Its first appearance (Jacobson and Colón 102) follows her infatuation with Peter van Pels and is a visual verbatim illustration of the Diary’s entry of February 1943:

Into this cliché-like romantic scene of the two young lovers’ beautiful profiles, the artists inserted part of Anne’s thoughts in a balloon, a conventional comic device: “and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad? …” (C 197)¹ (see Fig. 3b) (Jacobson and Colón 102).

Figs. 3a-b. The Anne Frank Authorized Graphic Biography, p. 102

The outdoor scenery, mediated by the clear bright window, includes the chestnut tree, whose bare branches that may be seen as an extension of Anne, giving her likeness the vividness and intensity that characterize her throughout the graphic novel. Unlike Peter’s image, which is clearly situated in front of the window, Anne’s image is ambiguous; she seems both in the attic and beyond, a dualism explained by her creativity and her imagination, enabling her to ‘escape’ her claustrophobic confinement. This creative ‘remedy’ is hinted at by Anne in the left panel (see Fig. 3 a), depicting her seated by her table and writing in her diary, while ignoring her physical conditions: the small, windowless room and the annoying presence of her forced roommate, Dr. Pfeffer. The text reads, “If I could not write about my thoughts and feelings, I’d absolutely suffocate” (102). Later, in the spring (April 18–19, 1944), Anne writes, “Our chestnut tree is in leaf, and here and there you can already see a few small blossoms. What could be nicer than sitting before an open window, enjoying nature …” (C 269). Eric Katz notes that nature, symbolized by the chestnut, “becomes for Anne a countervailing force to oppose the horror of her life in hiding and the oppressive human world that has created the conditions that make this hiding necessary” (E. Katz, “Anne Frank’s Tree” 285). Yet even nature cannot provide an endless safeguard against human cruelty, as is clearly visualized by comparing the romantic frame (see Fig. 3b) with the last panel of her Dairy (see Fig. 4) (Jacobson and Colón 113).

Fig. 4. The Anne Frank Authorized Graphic Biography, p. 113

While the former depicts a very dynamic and clear view of the world, the latter (see Fig. 4) presents only the tree and the sealed attic (113). Since this image is the Diary’s last entry, August 1, 1944, four days before their discovery, everything is ominously frozen and stands still in a deafening silence. The Annex—a man-made creation—is about to be shattered by evil human forces, juxtaposed with nature’s harmonious and eternal beauty.

In her article on Anne Frank’s tree, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett concludes:

The chestnut tree, then, in ways distinct from the Annex and Diary, attests to Anne Frank’s legacy.

Conclusion

Anne Frank’s graphic novel is rooted in the already established tradition and practice of comics as pedagogic tools, a tradition in which the Amsterdam Anne Frank House plays an important role. Despite its predecessors, A Family Secret and The Search, Anne Frank’s Dairy is a unique confessional biography, which does not cease to move and fascinate readers and to inspire writers, musicians, playwrights, scenarists, and diverse artists worldwide. Hence, adapting such a canonical work into a popular medium was a challenging endeavor. Both Jacobson and Colón are not novices in the field of graphic novels, yet, while adapting Anne Frank’s story, their main challenge was rendering the mythologized figure into a credible adolescent. Colón states, “I think the biggest problem for me was … [to] get her personality right” (Jacobson and Colón qtd. in J. Katz, “A New Look”). Nevertheless, despite the artists’ goal to depict Anne as a person and not as the larger-than-life symbol, they skillfully weave into her story inanimate relic-like objects—the Diary, the Tree and the Annex—thus subtly transforming Anne from the short-lived adolescent into the universal and perpetual myth which she became.

Note

Works Cited

Images Credit