The Diary of Anne Frank - St. Patrick School Presentation

Each diary reveals one voice, one teenager coping with the impossible. We see David Rubinowicz struggling against fear and terror in Poland. Yitzhak Rudashevski in Lithuania shows us how Jews clung to culture, to learning, and to hope, until there was no hope at all. In Belgium, Moshe Ze'ev Flinker is the voice of religion, constantly seeking answers from God for relentless tragedy. Finally, in Hungary, Eva Heyman demonstrates the unquenchable hunger for life that sustained her until the very last moment.Yet We Are Witnesses is not just about any single victim in the Holocaust. Author Jacob Boas, who was born in the same camp to which Anne Frank was sent, ends by discussing her famous diary.

In this moving account of the life, work, and ethics of four Jewish women intellectuals in the world of the Holocaust, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores the ways in which these women sought to maintain their faith in humanity while aware of intensifying destruction. She argues that through their written responses of autobiographical self-assertion Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum resisted the Nazi terror in ways that defy its horrifying dehumanization.

In a series of chronologically presented case studies, the book introduces the major themes and issues of Holocaust representation across a variety of media and genres, including film, drama, literature, photography, visual art, television, graphic novels, and memorials. Each work's specific historical and cultural significance is then discussed to provide further insight into the impact of one of the most devastating events of the 20th century and the continued relevance of its memory.