Adaption of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ Pulled from Shelves Due to ‘Sexually Explicit’ Images, Minimizing of Holocaust

An illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” was pulled from the shelves of the Vero Beach High School in Florida after a parent filed a complaint alleging that the book is “not a true” depiction of the Holocaust and features passages of Frank’s sexually charged thoughts on female bodies.“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” was one of four books challenged last month by the chairwoman of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a parents’ rights advocacy group, Jennifer Pippen.The illustrated book was adapted by the son of Holocaust survivors, Ari Folman, and illustrated by David Polonsky. Although the book was banned across the district, pending further review, it had only been available in the Vero Beach High School library.The book itself contains allegedly “sexually explicit” images that feature Frank walking among nude female statues. The Moms for Liberty complaint also alleges that the book is “not a true adaptation of the Holocaust.”Ms. Pippin told TCPalm that the Moms for Liberty organization has a list of about 250 other books they would like to see removed from school shelves.Following Florida’s book removal policies, the complaint first goes through the school’s principal before being heard by a committee of parents, teachers, and district officials that review the book and then make a recommendation to the school board.The school board then has the final stay on whether the book will return to library shelves or be permanently banned.The original “Diary of Anne Frank” is available in school libraries, and the Sun was not able to confirm whether that edition included some of the passages Ms. Pippin took issue with.The actual original diary of Anne Frank contains passages about Frank’s curiosities about a female friend’s body.“Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen,” one translation of the original diary reads. “I asked her whether, as proof of our friendship, we could touch each other’s breasts.”Frank went on to discuss her feelings about the female form in art, on which the removed adaptation based some of its illustrations.“I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy,” Frank wrote.These passages were originally omitted from the first publication of Frank’s diary by her father, Otto Frank, who said years later, when asked about this decision, “Of course Anne didn’t want certain things to be published.”“Anne’s diary is for me a testament. I must work in her sense,” Otto Frank said. “So I decided how to do it through thinking how Anne would have done it. Probably she would have completed it as I did for a publisher.”The first uncensored version of her diary was published in 1995, about 15 years after Otto Frank died. Since then the inclusion of Frank’s more sexual writings have been a hot-button issue, mostly owing to the fact that she died at 16 years of age. However, the authenticity of these passages has not been challenged.Ms. Pippin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Adaption of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ Pulled from Shelves Due to ‘Sexually Explicit’ Images, Minimizing of Holocaust

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