{"id":1173,"date":"2011-01-30T20:52:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T01:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2016-07-01T17:49:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T21:49:06","slug":"banned-books-awareness-the-diary-of-a-young-girl-by-anne-frank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/2011\/01\/30\/banned-books-awareness-the-diary-of-a-young-girl-by-anne-frank\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Books Awareness: \u201cThe Diary of a Young Girl\u201d by Anne Frank"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of the greatest books that changed the world, The Diary of a Young Girl<\/em> <\/a>by Anne Frank\u00a0 (1947), was perhaps the most brilliant literary reply to Mein Kampf<\/em>.\u00a0 Although it was not written to do just that, it\\\u2019s impact on a worldwide readership sure did.\u00a0 The diary has now been published in more than 60 different languages and is deemed one of the most powerful books of the 20th century, with more than twenty-five million copies having been printed.<\/p>\n

The journal was given to Anne on her 13th birthday and she wrote the many passages while in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.\u00a0 The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.\u00a0 After the war, the diary was retrieved by Anne\u2019s father, Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family.<\/p>\n

But were you aware that according to Amazon and the American Library Association, it\\\u2019s one of the most commonly banned and challenged books?<\/p>\n

After the diary became widely known in the late 1950s, various allegations against the diary were published, with the earliest published criticisms occurring in Sweden and Norway.\u00a0 The allegations in the Swedish Nazi magazine Fria Ord<\/em> (free words) in 1957 came from the Danish author and critic Harald Nielsen, who had claimed that the diary had been written by Meyer Levin, and that Anne Frank never existed.<\/p>\n

In 1958, Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by a group of protesters at a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna, who challenged Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her.\u00a0 He began searching for Karl Silberbauer and finally found him in 1963.\u00a0 When interviewed, Silberbauer readily admitted his role, and identified Anne Frank from a photograph as one of the people arrested.\u00a0 He provided a full account of events and recalled emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor.\u00a0 His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the diary continued to express the view that it was not written by a child, but had been created as pro-Jewish propaganda, with Otto Frank accused of fraud.\u00a0 In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating that the diary was a forgery.\u00a0 The judge ruled that if he published further statements he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000 German marks and a six-month jail sentence.\u00a0 Roth appealed against the court\\\u2019s decision and died in 1978, a year before his appeal was rejected.<\/p>\n

This book has been banned in several schools in the United States over the years.\u00a0 Mostly in regards to passages that were considered \\\u201dsexually offensive,\\\u201d as well as for the tragic nature of the book, which some felt might be \\\u201ddepressing\\\u201d for young readers.<\/p>\n

In 1982 it was challenged in Wise County, Virginia due to protests of several parents who complained of the book being sexually offensive.\u00a0 In 1983 four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of this title because it is quote, \\\u201da real downer\\\u201d.\u00a0 The ALA has documentation regarding six challenges to \\\u201dThe Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>\\\u201d since it began monitoring formal written complaints to remove or restrict books in 1990.\u00a0 Most of the concerns were about sexually explicit material such as mentioning the vagina and the experience of the changes related to puberty.<\/p>\n

In 1998 it was removed for two months from the Baker Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas after two parents charged that the book was pornographic.\u00a0 The book was returned after students waged a letter-writing campaign to keep it, and the review committee recommended the book\u2019s retention.<\/p>\n

Most recently, in January of 2010 officials for Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia stopped assigning Anne Frank\\\u2019s diary after a lone parent complained that the book includes sexually explicit material and homosexual themes.<\/p>\n

The version of the diary in question includes passages previously excluded from the widely read original edition.\u00a0 Some of the extra passages detail her emerging sexual desires; others include unflattering descriptions of her mother and other people living together.
\n\\\u201dThe Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition<\/em>,\\\u201d which was published on the 50th anniversary of Frank\\\u2019s death in a concentration camp, \\\u201dwill not be used in the future\\\u201d, said James Allen, director of instruction for the 7,600-student system.\u00a0 The school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints about instructional materials, Allen said.<\/p>\n

Culpeper\\\u2019s policy on \\\u201dpublic complaints about learning resources\\\u201d calls for complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate.\u00a0 In this case, the policy was not followed.\u00a0 Allen said the parent registered the complaint orally, no review committee was created and a decision was made that day by at least one school administrator.\u00a0 He said he is uncertain about the details because he was \\\u201dout of town\\\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sources: American Library Association, Amazon.com, Wikipedia, Washington Post <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro\/Deep Forest Productions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest books that changed the world, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank\u00a0 (1947), was perhaps the most brilliant literary reply to Mein Kampf.\u00a0 Although it was not written to do just that, it\\\u2019s impact on a worldwide readership sure did.\u00a0 The diary has now […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[377,378,379,2],"tags":[452,450,451],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-banned-books-awareness-and-reading-for-knowledge","category-censorship","category-social-change","tag-anne-frank","tag-jews","tag-wwii-nazi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}