'Happy' Anne Frank Day

[StoneMtn]

She would have been 77 years old today.

Learn more about Anne Frank here.

... and never forget!

[afro poppa]

indeed never forget

If you don't know about Anne Frank's story or the Holocaust in general read up on it. It is important to always remember so history never repeats itself.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Her current would-be age is a sharp reminder of how young she was when she was killed.

Never forget indeed; to paraphrase Emil Fackenheim, don't be handing out any posthumous victories.

[Im going home Donny]

Pretty sad but judging by Rwanda, Sudan.....seems the world forgot along time ago....

[edger]

I would have to agree Howler....

Some are seeing, some are listening... some remember or can draw the parallels. This number needs to grow.

[bouche]

I only found out about the Anne Franke story this year and I probably surfed wikipedia for hours following her story.

It all put a really solid picture in my head that definately got me thinking about were we live.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Pretty sad but judging by Rwanda, Sudan.....seems the world forgot along time ago....

As someone said not too long ago, in the wake of Rwanda and Darfur, "Never again... will six million Jews die at the hands of Nazi Germans between the years 1933 and 1945" (I paraphrase).

The point I always try to drive home for myself is that Germany was an epicentre of European high civilisation, amidst a culture that had produced Mozart, Goethe, and Freud, and yet still managed to churn out a population of homocidal monsters in just a few short years. And then I remember that a little underneath the surface, we're all homocidal monsters, some held back by real understanding, some only by the checks and balances of law and social order. The latter is subject to change.

[Im going home Donny]

I'm not quite sure what that has to do with the fact that the world is ignoring genocides again and again?

sorry to be so negative...I just don't get it.

Anne Frank and Jonathon Livingston seagull were both mindblowers for this kid in grade 7....gratefull to my library still.

Edited June 13, 2006 by Guest

[mattm]

money. the minute you pay people to care, they will.

I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam last time I was there and suggest others do so should they venture into the Dam.

Edited June 13, 2006 by Guest

[Im going home Donny]

yeah I do get it...its just that I don't at the same time.

[mattm]

same here howler, same here. I wish there was a mandatory rule that everyone had to visit a third world country at least once 'cause it's way harder to ignore everything once you've experienced it

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I'm not quite sure what that has to do with the fact that the world is ignoring genocides again and again?

I guess the problem may be with who "the world" is. The mass of humanity? All those cars driving past the White House every day? A family in Brockville watching the evening news? Etc. etc. Each of us alone is beyond powerless.

My sense is that we're still running on the Rabid Bastard power that peaked in mid-late nineteenth century, with the madness of nationalism and all that came (comes) with it, and to top it off, most people don't start getting a whiff of the atrocities until they're past their half-way mark.

Hell of an animal, the human being. Clever fuckers.

[d_rawk]

Part of the problem seems to be that people just aren't fully cognizant of how bad some things really are until after the fact. There is a vague awareness of Rwanda now, but cynically I wonder how much this has to do with "Hotel Rwanda". And it is too late. Pick random people off the street and try to have a conversation about Darfur/Sudan. There really isn't an awareness of the scope of the atrocities going on in the world as they happen, and I think that is the case not just now, but to a large extent, also then.

But something isn't news today if it also happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and ...

So there is no obvious reason to keep reporting it. And you display some "sensitivity" by not showing gruesome footage over the dinner hour. Besides, if you depress people too much, they may just change channels to the other 'lighter' broadcast just a click of the remote away. If you harp on something too long, customers might just start deciding to check out what the competing newspaper has to say. You pull your "correspondents" out of the area. Your coverage gets limited to those rare times when something truly explosive happens. But the 'explosive' isn't the real story ... the real story is the slow grind of human misery that goes on day after day after day. People stop being aware of these things until somebody focuses a narrow spotlight on it for a fleeting moment, usually - sadly - for reasons of political expediency.

Stephen Lewis comes to mind, too. And his tireless efforts to get Canadians to just simply understand and be aware of the tragedy that is the AIDS crisis in African contries. Efforts that have essentially destroyed him, because he has been forced to face the fact that he simply can't. And he hasn't managed to come to terms with that realization very well. Shades of Romeo Dallaire.

Thanks so much for the tip off, StoneMtn. A solemn day worth commemorating.

[hamilton]

I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam last time I was there and suggest others do so should they venture into the Dam.

I did that, too. It was interesting and depressing at the same time.

[Velvet]

Each of us alone is beyond powerless.

Ya hear that all the time but I don't think it's true, not do I think it's a very good message.

Ghandi was one person, and so was Bob Dylan. Andy Warhol, Alexander Graham Bell, Siddhartha Gotama, Igor Gouzenko, and yes, even Anne Frank each had a fairly significant impact on us, as individuals.

Now, if we all tried our best, maybe one or two of us can make it all better.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Having seen the museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I have to echo that too.

Pardon me for the bluntness, but what the fuck is wrong with us?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Each of us alone is beyond powerless.

Ya hear that all the time but I don't think it's true' date=' not do I think it's a very good message.[/quote']

- I hear ya.

My dream is that we get outside the circuits of power. I want to, lots of people I know and love want to, but who else? That's where the despair, and the need to do lots and lots of stuff, kicks in.

I'll always remember a favourite prof at U of T making a point about feminism that caught me off-guard - making the difference between egalitarian feminism, and the sort of "bourgeois" feminism that insisted that if a man had the right to foreclose on a family and their mortgage then so too goddammit should a woman.

Can we get past power, I wonder? And I always take power by Weber's definition - "the probability that one actor in a social situation will be able to impose his [or her] will despite resistance."