Remember

John Filo photo

John Lennon had it right….”Give Peace a Chance”.  Anger, intolerance, and misunderstanding can lead to violence; violence leads to tragedy.  Please take a moment today to remember the four innocent lives lost and several others injured at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

Okay, as you all should know now, on occassion I like to blog about things that have nothing to do with Rubber City Clothing or Akron.  This is one of those occasions.  I received a text today from my mother that said “Guess who would have turned 80 today?”  I drew a blank.  All of my deceased Grandparents would have been well beyond 80 (and I do know their birthdays); no great-aunts or uncles that I could think of; not Judy Garland (you know my Dorothy love).  I had no clue, which is exactly what I texted back.  “Anne Frank.”

Growing up, The Diary of Anne Frank was by far my favorite book.  It was a book that I happened to circle on my ‘Scholastic Book Club’ list in class one day in 4th grade.  I knew nothing of the Holocaust at that time; but I had heard my Grandad talk about WWII (mostly about the dirty French whores….that the other guys dallied with…Bill Jacobs was an upstanding man) and a book about a girl during the war seemed interesting to me.  When the book came about a month later, I dove right in.  I liked looking at the old pictures in the middle of the book, which made me wish that my Grammee had old pictures of herself as a child (my Grammee was only 5 yrs older than Anne).  To me Anne Frank seemed like a very nice girl.  She was certainly someone I could relate to.  Arguing with her mother, not getting along with a sibling, being a daddy’s girl….right up my alley.  From what I can recall, I don’t think I quite realized what was going on in the world as Anne wrote in her diary, but aside from being kept in an attic, her life seemed fairly normal.  She was strong-willed, imaginative, and a great writer.  She became a hero of sorts.  By the end of the book I knew that she and most of her family were killed in ‘prison camps’ but at the age of 9, that didn’t register with me.  A year later in 5th grade, there was a probably six-line paragraph in my Social Studies book that said something to the effect of ‘During World War II, 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.’ That was it.  The subject certainly fascinated me, but Akron Public School resources on the subject were quite limited.  I couldn’t wrap my mind around what the number ‘6 million’ really meant, let alone it representing a number of lives lost.  And I certainly couldn’t imagine why someone(s) would want to kill such a lovely young writer.  In 8th grade, we had to read Anne’s diary as part of our Language Arts class.  We also watched a couple of movies and saw other books about the Holocaust.  The reality and impact of what the Nazis did really sank in.

Had it not been for her father, Otto Frank, returning to the hidden attic after the war and finding her diaries, no one would really know who Anne Frank was.  She would have been one of six million Jews killed by the Nazis.  She is certainly not the only one to have written about the experience, either during or if they were lucky, after.  But Anne Frank is by far the most famous.  Her diary doesn’t talk of life in the camps, or of brutality by the Gestapo or SS.  It speaks of hopes and dreams; of normal teenage problems; of having your first crush on a boy; of dealing with the restrictions you must face in life.  Anne wrote about life exactly as it was, without sugar-coating anything.  Sort of like listening to a Bob Dylan song.  Even if it weren’t for the Holocaust, I feel I would still love to read Anne’s diary.  Had she lived, I believe she would have reached her dream of becoming a glamorous Hollywood movie star or maybe a great writer.  One entry dated May 11, 1944 (just a few months before her family was discovered and deported to the camps), Anne wrote ‘Just imagine how forgetful I’ll be when I’m eighty!’  Well, today she would have been.  She might not be here to forget, but she will certainly never be forgotten.