The Basel, Switzerland, Anne Frank Fonds
(Anne Frank Fund)—which controls the copyright to the Diary of Anne Frank—has admitted that the book was in fact at least
co-authored by Otto Frank, Anne’s father, after the war.
The admission proves that the book, which
is still heavily promoted as a “holocaust memoir,” is in fact largely a postwar
fabrication which contained parts of the young Anne’s diary with extensive
additions added by her father.
This is obvious from even a cursory look at
the actual diary. See, for example, the image below of two pages from the
diary, which shows both Anne’s real youthful handwriting and her father’s obviously
adult handwriting—although he signs his entries as “Anne Frank.”
 |
| The difference between Otto Frank's adult writing, and Anne Frank's juvenile handwriting, is obvious from this "original" diary page. Note the inscription top left, in Otto Frank's handwriting, signed as "Anne Frank." |
As the New York Times has pointed out, when “Otto Frank first published his daughter’s
red-checked diary and notebooks, he wrote a prologue assuring readers that the
book mostly contained her words, written while hiding from the Nazis in a
secret annex of a factory in Amsterdam.”
Normal copyright on books extends only 70
years after the author’s death. As Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen Belsen
in February 1945, the book theoretically entered the public domain in February
2015.
But, as the New York Times went on to say, the Anne Frank Fonds has now decided to try to extend copyright on the
book past the 70 year cut-off period—by admitting that Otto Frank, who died in
1980, was indeed a “co-author” after all.
The implications of this admission are
obvious. As the New York Times put it:
While
the foundation, the Anne Frank Fonds, in Basel, signaled its intentions a
year ago, warnings about the change have provoked a furor as the deadline
approaches. Some people opposed to the move have declared that they would defy
the foundation and publish portions of her text.
Foundation
officials “should think very carefully about the consequences,” said Agnès
Tricoire, a lawyer in Paris who specializes in intellectual property rights in
France, where critics have been the most vociferous and are organizing a
challenge. “If you follow their arguments, it
means that they have lied for years about the fact that it was only written by
Anne Frank.”
Actually, as I pointed out in Section 110
of The Six Million: Fact or Fiction,
Otto Frank actually admitted in an Amsterdam court that much of the handwriting
was in fact his, and not that of Anne’s.
He explained that he had “transcribed” Anne’s diary
before publication, and this was why the handwriting was his. Furthermore, Otto
Frank announced, he had actually only published a “novel” called The Annex:
Diary Notes 14 June 1942 – 1 August 1944 (in Dutch, Het Achterhuis.
Dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944) and had never called it the Diary of Anne Frank. The title Anne
Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl had been given to the book’s first English
translation.
This
“transcription” by Otto Frank finally explained the 1980 report by the German
Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau, or BKA) which showed
that portions of the dairy had been altered or added after 1951. The manuscript
was examined on orders of a West German court as the result of a libel action
brought by Otto Frank against a German publisher who had claimed the book was a
fraud.
The
manuscript, in the form of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound
in a fourth notebook, was examined with special equipment. The results of tests
performed at the BKA laboratories show that portions of the work, especially of
the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. As ballpoint pens were
not commercially available until after the war, the BKA concluded that those
sections were added after Anne Frank died.
The
real story of Anne Frank is tragic enough, but the cruel exploitation,
exaggeration, and faking of her diary by the Holocaust storytellers is a
scandal of epic proportions.
