Award-Winner Ruth Franklin on Anne Frank & Holocaust Remembrance

To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, The Learning Curve guest host Andrea Silbert, President of the Eos Foundation, speaks with Ruth Franklin, former editor of The New Republic and author of The Many Lives of Anne Frank. Ms. Franklin reflects on the enduring literary significance of Anne Frank’s diary while providing an overview of her life and the wider historical context of World War II and the Holocaust. Drawing on her extensive research, Franklin discusses her approach to understanding Anne Frank not only as a symbol of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust, but as a young girl whose life offers universal lessons due to being tragically shaped and ultimately destroyed by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. She describes how the Frank family’s daily routines in the Secret Annex were upended and explores the power of Anne’s writing, emphasizing how her personal reflections while in hiding remain a courageous human record of life under Hitler’s antisemitic tyranny. Ms. Franklin also highlights the role Anne’s father played in posthumously editing and publishing the diary, shaping the memoir that would become widely known and honored around the world. Ms. Franklin closes by reading an excerpt from her book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank.