A page from the Diary of Anne Frank

ROBERT FAURISSON, the famous French scholar and literature professor who researched official accounts of World War II — and was jailed, fined, persecuted, defamed and severely beaten on the street for his conclusions — died earlier this week at the age of 89.

The difficult and brilliant professor’s legacy includes his remarkable study of The Diary of Anne Frank. We all know the vivid and moving story of the young girl which was published in English as The Diary of a Young Girl, and later made into movies, plays and television dramas. Faurisson peered behind the drama for the facts.

Faurisson first worked on the project with the help of his university students in the 1970s. In the resulting article (later a book), he summarized his findings. He described the physical details of the “secret annex” in Amsterdam, where Frank hid from the Nazis with her family: 

Whoever has just read the Diary can normally only be shocked on seeing the “Anne Frank House” for the first time. He discovers a “glass house” which is visible and observable from all sides and accessible on its four sides. He discovers also that the plan of the house—as it is reproduced in the book through the good offices of Otto Frank—constitutes a distortion of reality.

[..]

While pointing out the view on the garden, I asked ten successive visitors how Anne Frank could have lived there hidden with her family for twenty-five months. After a moment of surprise (for the visitors to the museum generally live in a sort of state of hypnosis), each of the ten successive visitors realized, in a few seconds, that it was totally impossible. The reactions were varied; with some, dismay; with others, an outburst of laughter (“My God!”). One visitor, no doubt offended, said to me: “Don’t you think that it is better to leave the people to their dreams?” No one supported the thesis of the Diary in spite of some rather pitiful explanations furnished by the prospectus or by the inscriptions in the museum.

Faurisson also recounted his discussions with Otto Frank, Anne’s father, in the late 70s. These discussions are arguably some of the most important interviews of the 20th century. I highly recommend Faurisson’s account, which is fascinating, albeit highly condensed.

Faurisson came to the conclusion that much of the story described in the diary is false. Interestingly, he does not harshly condemn Otto Frank, whom obviously participated in the deception. It is a measure of Faurisson’s integrity that he presented Frank as he was — amiable and eager to please. Also he did not deny the terrible tragedy that befell Anne, who unquestionably died of typhus in a concentration camp:

 I ask that people not misunderstand the direction that I have given to my research on the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. Even if my personal conviction is that the work comes from Mr. Frank; even if I think that at the rate of two letters per day, three months would have been enough for him to prepare the first version of his clumsy fiction; even if I think that he did not believe that his work would know such an immense success (which, at the same time, would risk causing its terrible faults to become evident); even if I think that one can then find a thousand extenuating circumstances for him; even if I have the conviction that he did not at all seek to make up a vast hoax, but that he found himself dragged along by circumstances to guarantee all the extraordinarily brilliant results of a humble and banal undertaking—in spite of all that, the truth obliges me to say that the Diary of Anne Frank is only a simple literary fraud.

Faurisson’s ground-breaking work has, like the dramatized diary of an unexceptional girl who sadly met great tragedy, surely altered the course of history.

The Secret Annex

Robert Faurisson

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