Her diary is said to be the second most read book worldwide, after the Bible. It has been translated into 67 languages and transformed into several stage and screen productions. It enshrined its teenage author as one of the 20th century’s greatest witnesses to one of history’s darkest evils, and it has been a beacon to others imprisoned by fanaticism and hate.

Despite all Anne Frank accomplished, however, it appears that nearly 60 years after her death from typhus in Bergen-Belsen, she remains as stateless as she was when hidden away in her “Secret Annex” in the Netherlands, or wasting away in a concentration camp in Germany.

That, in the view of an Islip town council member, Christopher Bodkin, makes Frank a perfect candidate for honorary American citizenship.

The distinction has been bestowed on only six figures. The first to receive honorary citizenship was Winston Churchill, in 1963. Next was Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, in 1981, when Wallenberg received the honor posthumously. Also awarded citizenship posthumously were Mr. and Mrs. William Penn, founders of Pennsylvania, in 1984, and the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette, in 2002. Mother Theresa received honorary citizenship in 1996, a year before her death.

Anne Frank, Mr. Bodkin said, would be the first Jew to be awarded honorary American citizenship, and the first child.

The Long Islander said that he began his “quest” to honor Frank with American citizenship three or four years ago. The project has also included efforts to have a monument to her installed in the Capitol’s statuary hall and to have the Postal Service place her image on an American stamp. The councilman enlisted Reps. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California and a Holocaust survivor, and Steven Israel, Democrat of New York, to help with the efforts.

“They were both very enthusiastic” about honorary citizenship, Mr. Bodkin recounted, but the legislation “didn’t even make it into committee.”

Mr. Bodkin said he has also met with little success so far on his statue efforts, and it was “just horrible” when the postal committee turned down the Anne Frank stamp this year, issuing Mickey Mouse and other Disney character postage instead. Despite those setbacks, Mr. Bodkin decided to rekindle his Anne Frank citizenship campaign last month, when Radio Netherlands reported that Frank died without citizenship in any country, and remains stateless.

Frank was born June 12, 1929, in Germany, and died there in February or March 1945. In September 1935, the Nazi Nuremberg laws stripped German Jews of citizenship, and in 1941, the Nazis also removed citizenship from Germans who had been living abroad for five years or more – a group that consisted mostly of Jews and other political refugees, like the Franks.

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry, Rainer Lingenthal, said, however, that Anne Frank “was German until her death, because the deprivation of her citizenship by the Nazi regime was null and void.”

A spokeswoman for the German Embassy, Martina Nibbeling-Wriessnig, explained that a series of laws passed after the war’s end in 1945 invalidated the previous Nazi statutes and restored citizenship to German Jews who wanted it.

When asked whether it made a difference that Anne Frank died stateless in a German concentration camp before any of those invalidating laws took effect, Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig replied: “Yeah, but that doesn’t matter – annulment means it has to be treated as if it never existed.”

From a legal standpoint, she said, since the Nazi statutes were annulled rather than repealed, it was as if they had never been enacted in the first place, and therefore never had any effect on Frank’s citizenship.

Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig also pointed to article 116 of the German constitution, which stipulates: “Former German citizens who between January 30, 1933, and May 8, 1945, were deprived of their citizenship for political, racial, or religious reasons, and their descendants, shall be re-granted German citizenship on application. They are considered as not having been deprived of their German citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after May 8, 1945, and have not expressed a contrary intention.”

Both clauses of this article, Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig said, included protections for Germans who did not want to reclaim their citizenship after the Holocaust. And because restoration of citizenship requires some active expression of a desire to reclaim German nationality, Article 116 does not provide for posthumous restoration of citizenship.

According to Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig, however, a 1962 decision by the West German supreme court did grant posthumous citizenship to Germans who died as a result of the Holocaust.

“Anne Frank is 100% a German citizen,” Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig said.

“The citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany are proud of Anne Frank having been a German,” she added.

Ms. Nibbeling-Wriessnig, who is a lawyer, acknowledged that because Article 116 was designed not to force citizenship on Germans who no longer wanted it, it is unclear whether intent factors into the granting of posthumous citizenship. She said she was not aware of any court decisions involving relatives of Jews murdered in the Holocaust who claimed their dead relatives did not want to be German citizens.

In Frank’s case, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust was her father, who died in 1980.

The director of development at the New York-based Anne Frank Center, Mary Geary, said, “it would be extremely hard to imagine Anne Frank as an adult finding a rapport or connection with her German nationality, having witnessed what she did.”

Ms. Geary pointed to an October 9, 1942, entry in Frank’s diary, in which she reacted to reports of Germans rounding up and killing Jews.

“These outrages are described as ‘fatal accidents,'” Frank wrote. “Nice people, the Germans! To think that I was once one of them too! No, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. In fact, Germans and Jews are the greatest enemies in the world.”

The senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Aaron Breitbart, also expressed skepticism about the purported restoration of Anne Frank’s German citizenship.

“I’m sure the Germans would like to claim her,” he said, but he added: “Anne Frank’s citizenship was certainly taken away from her, and she was dead by the time the law had been changed, so it’s very difficult to say that she became a German citizen after she died.”

In summary, he said, “Anne Frank remains stateless.”

If it is unclear whether Frank is a German citizen, it is certain that she is not Dutch, despite the widespread assumption that the Franks had become citizens of the Netherlands. Even many Dutch believed Frank to be one of their own. But when producers working on a TV series entitled “The Greatest Dutchman of All Time” found that Anne Frank polled in the top 10, they also learned that she never became a Dutch citizen, despite having lived in the Netherlands for nearly 11 of her 15 years.

Radio Netherlands reported that the producers tried to have Frank made an honorary Dutch citizen posthumously, arguing that the girl had expressed that desire in her diary.

But the effort died in the Dutch Parliament, as it fell under criticism by historians who felt Frank should not be made a citizen of the Netherlands without being able to give her consent, Radio Netherlands reported. There were also concerns that making Frank Dutch would sanitize her life’s story, considering that she and her family were betrayed in the Netherlands, and that the country was unable to keep the Franks out of the Nazis’ reach.

Concern was also expressed that granting Dutch nationality to Frank would inspire those who survived the Holocaust, and their descendants, to pursue citizenship as well. According to Mr. Bodkin and the executive director of the Anne Frank Center, Elisabeth Feerick, Dutch officials were concerned that a wave of new citizens would clamor to receive the Netherlands’ generous pensions and other social-welfare benefits.

The Dutch Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this article.

In a letter to America’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Mr. Bodkin wrote he had “spoken with several Dutch citizens who are somewhat embarrassed and ashamed that their government cannot find a way to give Anne Dutch citizenship.”

Nor can Israel – home to thousands of Holocaust survivors and their descendants over the years – give Frank citizenship. A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, David Siegel, said that while Frank “is a national symbol of immense importance in Israel,” the country’s laws do not allow for the granting of citizenship posthumously.

To Mr. Bodkin, that leaves America as Anne Frank’s natural home.

“Who better than this country to afford Anne Frank citizenship? It’s a place that has been a safe place for Jews literally since day one,” Mr. Bodkin said.

“I wish many European Jews would come here. You can’t tell me it’s not going to happen again,” he said, referring to the recent and rising tide of anti-Semitic acts in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe.

To Mr. Bodkin, welcoming and honoring Frank would be a way of encouraging these European Jews to seek protection in America. For Mr. Israel, it will be “a priority in the 109th Congress.”

“We’re exploring a variety of ways to give Anne Frank national recognition and honor, for inspiring so many millions of people over the past generations,” he said. As well as honorary citizenship, some of those possibilities include the aforementioned statue and bestowing some kind of congressional medal on Frank, the Islip congressman said.

He also said that, were such legislation to pass, it would be America’s first formal congressional recognition of Anne Frank.

Mr. Israel acknowledged that the granting of honorary citizenship is rare and difficult, but said Frank would be a worthy recipient, certainly meeting the standards set by previous recipients, and representing what Mr. Israel sees as America’s defining characteristics.

“I think this country was founded on, and continues to fight for, principles of human rights, freedom, and dignity,” he said. “And I can’t think of anyone who symbolizes those qualities more than Anne Frank.”

Ms. Feerick, of the Anne Frank Center in New York, said that, from a personal standpoint, she would be “thrilled” to see Frank recognized as an honorary American citizen.

“This is a country of immigrants, that’s a fact,” she said. “And she could be considered a very welcome and honored immigrant, posthumously.”

She explained that Frank’s father, Otto, had been planning to work in New York, “before the war took over and thwarted many plans.” She said she thought Anne Frank “might very well have found a place here as an advocate, a reporter, or a writer.”

And having her as an American, Ms. Feerick said, would be “an honor.”

“I can see no negatives to it, no obstacles to it,” she said, adding that Frank’s “spirit and legacy are enormously significant, and will continue to be.”