My most profound travel experience came almost 50 years ago at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Especially jarring was the vibe of claustrophobia. Imagine eight innocent people hiding in eight rooms for two tense years while Nazis hunted them down only because they were Jews.
So they imprisoned themselves voluntarily in that the alternative was much worse during the Holocaust of World War II. In her diary, written in what she called “the Annex,” teen-age Anne told of how she felt.
“ . . . Like a songbird that has had its wings torn off and flies against the bars of its cage in total darkness,” she wrote. “‘Outside, fresh air and laughter,’ a voice inside me screams. I don’t even try to answer anymore . . .”
Her story is current again locally because a small group of masked neo-Nazis in Howell Township waved swastikas and chanted “Anne Frank was a whore!” outside a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank earlier this month at the American Legion Post 141 about 60 miles northwest of Detroit.
This sort of animosity is a recurring undercurrent in Michigan and particularly in Livingston County. During a racist backlash in the 1970s, Robert Miles — as Grand Dragon — led a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and hosted rallies at his farm.
In the last decade, Michigan at large saw both a plot by right-wing militia to kidnap and kill the governor as well as protestors with rifles invading the state capitol to intimidate legislators. This is the lava churning beneath our feet in the Great Lakes State.
The Anne Frank play wasn’t the only demonstration site that night. Another rally took place in nearby Fowlerville, again with masked fans of Adolf Hitler, who murdered six million European Jews. Similar events occurred elsewhere in Livingston County last summer.
Chants then included “Heil, Hitler!” and “We love Hitler! We love Trump!” Speaking of Donald Trump — the once and future president — he has helped embolden the extremists in his decade of demagogy and he has vowed to hunt down undocumented migrants and run them out of the United States.
To do so, he’s deputized bullies like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to enforce his will. It’s easy to see what could come next.
First targets will be Latin American men of color, the nearest and clearest scapegoats. Trump has convinced his cult that many of these “illegals” are murderers and rapists sent from “shithole countries” to live in welfare luxury in fancy hotels. Maybe they’ll hide in the annex of the Ritz.
It won’t stop there. What if new terrorism erupts from the Middle East involving Muslims or Arabs? During his first term — despite no emergency — Trump sprang his “Muslim ban” on travelers passing through airports from certain nations. Real terrorism would bring a worse crackdown.
And what about transgender Americans, demonized by Trump and by his white, Christian, nationalist base? This is about more than “men in women’s sports.” Crackdowns on the LGBTQ+ movement and on abortion rights are two elements of the crusade against sexuality spurred by the religious right.
One trick of authoritarians like Trump is to isolate specific minority groups one at a time as “the other” and convince his followers that the “others” are the enemy from within, as Trump puts it.
Next, it could be journalists or school teachers or religious leaders from faiths he doesn’t like. Just isolate each sub-group and reassure the majority that the fate of those “others” is none of your concern.
Trump probably won’t target Jews, at least not at first. But the bubbling up of public antisemitism in recent months in the Detroit outskirts — and across the world — is a manifestation of the hate and division roused in recent years.
In Anne Frank’s Amsterdam this month, violence erupted around the soccer match of an Israeli team. (According to Dutch police, tensions mounted after supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. burned a Palestinian flag in the city square and were filmed chanting anti-Arab slogans.) Other antisemitic incidents followed in the ensuing days unrelated to soccer, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog called a “pogrom.”
When it comes to violence like this, Frank’s precocious writing echoes through the decades. This, from her diary, after Germany conquered the Netherlands but before the family went into hiding.
“Jews must wear a yellow star,” Frank wrote. “Jews must hand in their bicycles; Jews are banned from trams and are forbidden to use any car, even a private one; Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o’clock . . .”
The horror didn’t come all at once. Gradually, the vise squeezed.
“Jews must be indoors from eight o’clock in the evening until 6 o’clock in the morning,” she wrote. “. . . Jews are forbidden to visit theaters . . . Jews may not go to swimming baths . . . Jews may not take part in public sports . . . Jews may not visit Christians.”
Anne Frank, her parents, her sister, and the other four in hiding were captured in 1944. She died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Only her father, Otto, survived to authorize the book, the play, and the film.
Had Anne lived, her 96th birthday would be next June 12. Her memory and spirit will return to public attention again on January 27 when Anne Frank, the Exhibition opens in New York at the Center for Jewish History. It’s scheduled to run through April 30.
The immersive experience will include a full-scale replica of the Annex where the Frank family hid with the other four. Also on display will be scrapbooks and other artifacts from the Franks, who left Germany after Hitler took power.
Anne wrote in Dutch. Curators at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam said the exhibition is designed to travel to other places. Might one stop be near here?
“At this time,” they said in a press release, “future venues have not been determined.”
Perhaps a visit to metro Detroit would radiate vibes of truth and caution as far out as Livingston County and, maybe, as well, to the ends of the Earth.
