Post by tonyg on Sept 1, 2015 2:08:18 GMT
In Bruno Bettelheim's essay "The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank" he takes on a much different viewpoint for analyzing the events of not only the life of the Franks, but also the Jewish population as a whole. While most people write about the events with compassion, he writes almost criticizing the actions of the Franks. He writes that the Franks could have survived, had they not been so attached to the comfort of a normal life. Bruno Bettelheim points out that with all the time the Frank family spent in their hideout the could have formulated an escape plan that would allow for at least a few people to escape and survive. However they were so bent on maintaining their family that they neglected taking action to ensure their survival. He uses another family, in a similar situation, as an example for what the Franks could have done. The story of Marga Minco tells about a girl who's parents devised an escape plan which allowed Marga to survive. Bettelheim writes, "The story of little Marga who survived, every bit as touching, remains totally neglected by comparison." This story is not nearly as well known.
The author's purpose of writing this essay is to show the reader how the events of the Holocaust were not handled properly. He says that when we are faced with a horror so incomprehensible, as the Nazi concentration camps were, we deny its existence entirely. At the end of the play and movie, The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne's voice is heard saying, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." This quote from Anne Frank never happened. It was only placed at the end of the production to help us to cope with the devastating reality that was the Holocaust. The author writes, "This improbable sentiment is supposedly from a girl who had been starved to death, had watched her sister meet the same fate before she did, knew that her mother had been murdered, and had watched untold thousands of adults and children being killed. This statement is not justified by anything Anne actually told her diary." It does not make sense for a girl that has seen the things that she has seen and experienced to be able to put the death of her and her family, as well as the countless other lives she witnessed being taken, aside and to still think that everyone is good on the inside.
Bruno Bettelheim's essay about the life of Anne Frank tells us that we did not learn from the Holocaust as much as we should have. When faced with such tragedies people try to ignore it for as long as possible. When faced with almost certain death, people began to think that the only way to deal with this was not to take action to avoid destruction. They chose to ignore the situation entirely and they thought that the best way to deal with their annihilation, was to not deal with it at all. There were opportunities for some to hide people from capture by the Nazis but instead they carried out their normal lives and ignored the whole thing while families were being taken from the homes right next to them. The lesson we need to take from this is that horrors like these cannot be ignored. They must be taught because they did happen and the best way to prevent it from happening in the future is to learn from the past.
The author's purpose of writing this essay is to show the reader how the events of the Holocaust were not handled properly. He says that when we are faced with a horror so incomprehensible, as the Nazi concentration camps were, we deny its existence entirely. At the end of the play and movie, The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne's voice is heard saying, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." This quote from Anne Frank never happened. It was only placed at the end of the production to help us to cope with the devastating reality that was the Holocaust. The author writes, "This improbable sentiment is supposedly from a girl who had been starved to death, had watched her sister meet the same fate before she did, knew that her mother had been murdered, and had watched untold thousands of adults and children being killed. This statement is not justified by anything Anne actually told her diary." It does not make sense for a girl that has seen the things that she has seen and experienced to be able to put the death of her and her family, as well as the countless other lives she witnessed being taken, aside and to still think that everyone is good on the inside.
Bruno Bettelheim's essay about the life of Anne Frank tells us that we did not learn from the Holocaust as much as we should have. When faced with such tragedies people try to ignore it for as long as possible. When faced with almost certain death, people began to think that the only way to deal with this was not to take action to avoid destruction. They chose to ignore the situation entirely and they thought that the best way to deal with their annihilation, was to not deal with it at all. There were opportunities for some to hide people from capture by the Nazis but instead they carried out their normal lives and ignored the whole thing while families were being taken from the homes right next to them. The lesson we need to take from this is that horrors like these cannot be ignored. They must be taught because they did happen and the best way to prevent it from happening in the future is to learn from the past.