Preface and Acknowledgments

Since it first appeared in Amsterdam in the early summer of 1947, Anne Frank's Diary has become one of the most widely read, powerfully affecting books in the world, but it has also been in startling ways one of the most controversial. Early on, it was rejected in manuscript by dozens of publishers in Holland, Germany, England, and America, mainly because editors doubted that people so soon after the war would want to buy the private jottings of a Dutch girl who hid with her family for twenty-five months and then died in a Nazi concentration camp. Once accepted, the Diary soon proved all the skeptics wrong. Acclaimed as an astonishing story of eight fugitives, an indelible portrait of a gifted girl growing up, and a remarkable document of the Holocaust, it has been—as a book, play, film, school text, art work, ballet, and musical—read, seen, and talked about everywhere, turning Anne Frank from a singular girl into a cultural myth and one of the most familiar, best-loved figures of history. As the critic Alvin Rosenfeld has observed, "streets, schools, and youth centers bear her name,

just as public statues, stamps, and commemorative coins bear her image. Youth villages, forests, and foundations have been named after her . . . requiems, cantatas, poems and songs composed for her. Public figures of every kind, from politicians to religious leaders, regularly invoke her name and quote lines from her book. In all of these ways, her name, face, and fate are kept constantly before us."

But if the ubiquitous girl and her book are now legendary, they have also been the persistent subject of fierce dispute. From the late 1950s to the present moment, countless individuals and groups have used (and continue to use) the diary of Anne Frank for their own personal and political designs, often forcing her father, Otto, his heirs, and the Anne Frank Foundation into painful, protracted quarrels and lawsuits. Most of these fights have centered on baseless yet continuous claims by Nazis and neo-Nazis about the authenticity of the work itself. The first allegations that the girl's diary was a forgery were published in Swedish and Danish newspapers in 1957, and from then on, essays and books repeating and embroidering the charges have appeared with dismal regularity. Among the most notorious are Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? (1974), David Irving's Hitler and His Generals (1975), A. R. Butz's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (1975), Ditlieb Felderer's Anne Frank's Diary —A Hoax? (1978), and Robert Faurisson's The Diary of Anne Frank —Is It Authentic? (1980) and The Diary of Anne Frank —A Forgery (1985). The growing number of such publications in the late 1970s prompted the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation to prepare the authoritative De Dagboeken van Anne Frank , (Amsterdam, 1986), to respond to "the slurs . . . intended to cast doubt both

on the personal integrity of the author and on the relationship between the original manuscript, the published version, and its many translations." The massive "Critical Edition" (which reprints nearly all the different versions of the diary) also includes a sixty-three-page summary of an exhaustive handwriting and technical study by the Netherlands State Forensic Science Laboratory of the Ministry of Justice, proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the girl's work was genuine. Yet despite the definitive evidence presented there, pamphlets and books questioning the authenticity of the Diary continue to appear. Late in 1993, the Anne Frank Foundation asked the Dutch courts to stop dissemination of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach , coauthored by Faurisson and the Belgian historian Siegfried Verbeke, which had been published in 1991 and was circulating in the Netherlands. (For a detailed history of extremist assaults on the Diary , see David Barnouw's essay on pages 84-101 of The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition [New York, 1989] and Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust [New York, 1993], pp. 229-35.)

If the recurring attacks on the legitimacy of Anne Frank's Diary now make up a long, ongoing chapter in the history of the malignancy known as Holocaust revisionism, the other notable dispute concerning the book is equally fascinating and instructive. In the early 1950s the novelist Meyer Levin, after helping the Diary achieve great popularity in America, became involved in a bitter disagreement about adapting it for the theater, an argument that brought him into conflict with Otto Frank and scores of other people, lasted thirty years, and was widely reported in the press at the time. My own interest in the extraordinary Levin-Frank dispute began in the late 1980s,

when I was teaching a course called Imagining American Jews at Williams College. I was struck by how intensely many contemporary writers—John Berryman, Alfred Kazin, Philip Roth, C. K. Williams, Francine Prose, Anne Roiphe, Scott Spencer, as well as Meyer Levin and others—were gripped by the Anne Frank story. At first, I thought of writing a book about the different ways these American writers depicted the girl and her fate, but as I explored the subject I found that Levin's preoccupation was by far the most complex and resonant, for it not only shaped his entire personal and literary life but reached into the realms of publishing, marketing, theater, film, law, religion, politics, the media, and popular culture. The story of Meyer Levin's relationship with Anne Frank also reveals what many people (American, German, Dutch, English, Israeli; Jewish and gentile; famous and obscure) wanted, needed, or hoped to make of the afterlife of the girl and her book, an afterlife that has taken on the shape and implication of myth. I have four main aims in this study: (1) to provide a thorough narrative of a controversy that up to now has been inadequately and misleadingly described, either by the participants or by onlookers who had only a sketchy idea of what was happening and what was at stake; (2) to explore the effect of the prolonged dispute on the life and career of a neglected but important writer; (3) to shed light on evolving American attitudes toward Jews in the 1950s and afterwards; and (4) to reflect on the continually vexed issue of how people bear witness to and represent the Holocaust.

At every stage of my work I have benefited from the generosity, support, and sensitive criticism of many people.

Tereska Torres Levin gave me permission to read and quote from the Meyer Levin papers in Special Collections, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. She has also answered countless questions and shared many documents with me. Although she has not read this manuscript and is not responsible for any of the interpretations or errors, I could not have proceeded with the project without her assistance, candor, and encouragement.

Eli, Gabriel, and Mikael Levin, the writer's sons; Dominique Torres, his daughter; Judith Klausner, his cousin; and Leonard Schroeter and Leon Wells, his friends, have also been extraordinarily helpful to me, providing published and unpublished material, responding liberally to inquiries, and offering cheerful hospitality. They, too, have not seen any of this text and should not be held accountable for my arguments or mistakes.

Several other participants in the history described here have also been uncommonly forthcoming with recollections and documents: Joseph Marks made it possible for me to reconstruct the events of June and July 1952 by sharing a file of letters and memoranda from his years at Doubleday; he also read and commented on part of the first chapter. Barbara Epstein, who edited Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl when it first appeared in America, permitted me to read and quote from her correspondence with Otto Frank and others. Edward Costikyan of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison (Otto Frank's attorneys) granted me access to extensive files of the lengthy litigation. Samuel Fredman (Levin's attorney) and Robert Gottlieb (his editor) also shared memories and letters with me. Mordecai Kaplan, who twice directed Meyer Levin's

Anne Frank at the Lyric Stage in Boston, talked with me at length about the productions and gave me copies of sketches, playbills, reviews, and photographs.

Librarians and archivists are indispensable to a scholar's work. I am particularly indebted to Bruce Abrams, archivist, Supreme Court, New York County Court House; Alice Birney, Library of Congress; Donald Crafton, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research; Howard B. Gotlieb, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University; Harold Miller, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; and Dienke Hondius, Joke Kniesmeyer, Yt Stoker, and Hans Westra at the Anne Frank Stichting in Amsterdam. The reference and interlibrary-loan staffs at Sawyer Library, Williams College, have been unfailingly helpful, notably Lee Dalzell, Helena Warburg, Walter Komorowski, Peter Giordano, and Jean Vankin.

I also received valuable practical help from Adriana Millenaar Brown, who worked with me in Amsterdam in 1990, translating documents, introducing me to staff members at various institutes, and making my stay in the city a pleasure. My cousin, Shep Ellman, tracked down essential material in Jerusalem libraries and inspired me with his excitement about the project. Elfriede Frank and Vincent Frank-Steiner were wonderfully hospitable to me when I visited Basel in 1991, allowing me to read correspondence between Otto Frank and American publishers.

I am also pleased to acknowledge my indebtedness to others who shared recollections and documents with me or assisted me in other important ways: Larry Frisch, Thelma Frye, Herbert Gold, Vahan Hogroian, Judith Jones, Susan Kerner, Den-

nis Klein, Shimon Lev-Ari, Howard J. Levitz, Ken McCormick, Frederick Morton, David Passow, Carl E. Rollyson, Louis A. Rachow, Abram Rothberg, Charles Simmons, Karen Shawn, Benjamin Weiser Varon, C. K. Williams, David Zinder, and Louise Zutra.

I wish also to thank the following for permission to quote from unpublished material and to reproduce photographs: Paul Berkowsky, Edward Costikyan, Barbara Epstein, Samuel Fred-man, Martha Gellhorn, Robert Gottlieb, Robert Gurbo, Garson Kanin, Floria Lasky, Archie Lieberman, Joseph Marks, Simon and Schuster, and the editors of the New York Times Book Review .

Williams College provided research support, travel grants, and sabbatical leaves, which allowed me to complete my research and writing more quickly than I had anticipated.

To seven readers of this book in typescript, I owe very particular thanks: Robert Bell and Ellen Schiff read an intermediate draft, responded with characteristic enthusiasm and meticulous attention to arguments and details, and made many valuable suggestions. Morris Dickstein proposed several crucial revisions that significantly improved the shape and impact of the entire study. Michael Grunebaum helped me sharpen a number of my points about the psychological dimensions of the history. My daughters, Ruth and Elizabeth Graver, read the manuscript with a combination of imaginative probing, analytical rigor, and special feeling for the author. They will recognize many of their recommended revisions (and even some of their phrasings) in the text. Their other contributions are incalculable. My wife, Suzanne, as always my most devoted,

sympathetic, and discriminating critic, read the book chapter by chapter and improved it everywhere, in conception, structure, and style.

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS
L.G.
NOVEMBER 1994