Why...

Last night we saw an excellent, yet heart wrenching performance based on "The Diary of Ann Frank". Ann as we all remember was in hiding from the Nazis with her family, & friends in the attic of a factory building in Amsterdam during WWII . We all know the outcome of their tragic story, why then did I still feel compelled to see it retold. For me it's because her family, is not very different from mine growing up, or families today. The ordinary becomes the extra ordinary, living a life, & in Ann's case doing so, so artfully well, under the most dire of human circumstances.

The history of WWII so affected my parents, they were young adults, both born in the U.S., when it broke out, & married several years after the war, of which my father served. Due to the effects of the war, my own father evolved to become a rather overly protective parent, & my mother quite the opposite, nonetheless the tone in the 50's still permeated with an attitude & sense of antisemitism, felt in different strata's, depending upon which part of the country you were living. I'm certain my siblings & I were affected by it, for at times the tone was so thick, & would color various an episode, never to be ignored.

I knew that watching the PBS Masterpiece Theatre's version of Ann Frank, would bring me back in some degree to that place, it would be upsetting, but I chose to watch it nonetheless. For me Ann Frank & her family represents my family & every Jewish family, that could have been in that place, at the wrong time in "herstory/history". Why, I ask, they were oh so close to being free. "Why?"

Ann Frank, your sister, your parents, friends, & the other six million souls, you will never be forgotten, as you live on in the hearts & minds of each & every one of us. "So help me/us God."

*Amen*