A picture of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, aged 80

[IndianaGreen]

A picture of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, aged 80

It is a picture of what might have been, of a "beautiful, kind-looking lady", her face wrinkled by the passage of time over a life never lived: Holocaust victim Anne Frank at the age of 80.

by Ian Johnston
Published: 5:02PM BST 06 Jun 2009


The Anne Frank Trust UK commissioned the age progression photograph
to mark the diarist's 80th birthday on 12th June

The 'age progression' image shows the diarist as she might have appeared today had she not died of typhus and starvation at the age of 15 in Bergen Belsen in March 1945, just a few weeks before the Nazi concentration camp was liberated by British troops.

Created for the Anne Frank Trust UK to mark her birthday on Friday - using the same techniques developed to artificially age missing people such as toddler Madeleine McCann - it is hoped the picture will help inspire Britain's school children to think about the kind of lives they would like to lead, and to remember the loss of six million people in the Holocaust.

The Trust will launch a competition for children to write a letter to their 80-year-old selves, one of a number of projects being run across the world to mark the anniversary and challenge racist attitudes.

Anne's half-sister Eva Schloss, a survivor of Auschwitz who played with her as a child in Amsterdam, saw the aged image for the first time on Thursday.

"I must say I was a bit shocked... I don't really know why," she said.

"It is a beautiful lady, very gentle, very kind-looking with this gentle smile."

The aged image was produced by a Michigan firm called Phojoe which has worked with US police on dozens of missing persons cases.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/5462049/A-picture-of-Holocaust-victim-Anne-Frank-aged-80.html

[Skittles]

1. poignant

:cry:

[imdjh]

2. I'm surprised that she'd only be 80

We were talking about this the other day. For some reason I am surprised when I see survivors on TV- it seems so long ago that in the back of my mind I think of them all being dead by now. Part of that is because the survivors I have known in my life, were old when I knew them back in the 1970's. Maybe they just seemed old to a teenager.

[elleng]

4. I thought of them as being dead, too, but actually was in Germany 7 or so years ago,

hadn't wanted ever to go there (or Poland, which was our destination for a wedding) and avoided looking hard at any seniors. I'm 64, born Feb. '45, so yes, she would be about 80.

[yurbud]

7. a Holocaust survivor came to speak at one of my schools a few years ago and I was surprised...

at how young and energetic she seemed.

[Baby Snooks]

13. They value life more than we do...

They know how precious each moment, each day is. As do their children who realize they wouldn't be here had Hitler succeeded.

[Skittles]

16. Meip Geis, who sheltered the Frank family, is 100

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miep_Gies

[Rowdyboy]

3. I think she would have been a very special lady.....beautiful both without and within

[tomreedtoon]

5. This will sound irreverent, but it's my personal belief.

The age-progressed photo looks like the late Richard Basehart in drag.

I warned you that this might offend. But I have to speak the truth.

I don't denigrate old people, because we all will be some day, unless the economy crashes and we kill each other in the streets (which is becoming more likely every day). But the "age progressed" photos are a software trick. They are based on a presumption by the software designer. And that presumption looks bogus to me.

It doesn't help that the outfit is a black turtleneck with blazer on top; it makes the aged photo subject look even more masculine. Couldn't they find a nice blouse with maybe a cameo at the throat? An open-throat blouse with a string of pearls? Something?

On a more serious note, I believe the most famous quote of Anne Frank...

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

...is the most unfortunate quote to come out of World War II, far beating out Goring's "No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer." Because people continue to believe Frank's quote, and end up dead.

[imdjh]

11. I was watching about how the guards had "adopted" a Jewish baby born in the camp

There were photos of the guards, holding the baby, adoring and playing with him. They made sure that he and his mother had special rations, and brought medicine, clothes, and toys. The woman reporting this went on to describe conditions in her internment which she said had caused her to consider not participating in the documentary because it would anger some people that she wasn't just telling the horror stories and which concerned her because she didn't want people to think that it wasn't horrible, but she wanted to tell her story which included these moments of less than sheer misery. She told a story about the women laughing after being disinfected and putting on the clothes that were available, feeling ridiculous putting on a cocktail dress and two left shoes in a work camp. She told stories about guards that were human.

I do not condemn the decision to nuke Japan, but I also sincerely believe that the decision was easier to make because they wee Japanese and not German. I think we (I wasn't born yet) saw the Japanese as being quite different from the Germans- a racial difference that we associated with a different brain type. Even by the time I came along, I was still getting that the Japanese (and the Chinese as well) were remarkably different in their way of thinking, their level of obedience, their lack of regard for human life including their own. On the one hand inferior and on the other hand highly disciplined' perhaps intellectually superior and morally inferior. In any event, they were not like the Germans. The Germans were our cultural cousins, just like us, and if atrocities were coming from Germany it was because good people were being fooled, seduced, and led by evil people. Surely to some extent the German people were simply good people being led by evil people, even if not to the degree of innocence we would have liked to believe.

For our part in thinking about Anne's quote- we have to ask how we feel about those under Nazi rule. Are we qualified to judge the Dutch people? If we do, can we rule that they should have fought to the death rather than submit and comply? Perhaps Anne, who had a lot of time to think about things, saw the people she regarded as being basically good as doing what they had to do to survive.

[truedelphi]

17. The guards at the camps ran the gamut of personality types.

Some holding those jobs just wanted to avoid being sent to the Eastern Front.

And although conditions at the camps were brutal, the fact is that the German people were being bombed and were not exactly finding themselves with ample food rations, especially after D Day came down.

I remember reading the account of one woman being tried at Nuremberg. She kept pleading that she and others who worked with her tried to feed some of the children out of their own meagre rations.

I didn't know what to make of her story. Was she a monster in denial about what had gone on? or was she telling the truth?

Perhaps Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father said it best when he said that the only ones that should be held to blame were the people at the top. And that hating anyone only led to war and more hatred.

I don't know. I certainly have been angry with fellow Americans who will not believe that Bush's Iraq war policies hurt anybody and who refuse to understand anything but what the media tells them. In a very real sense, a lot of what went on in Germany also went on here. Although perhaps in a more sophisticated way. But one million dead in Iraq, some crispified by phosphorous and others cancer victims from Depleteed Uranium, might not feel their deaths are very different from what happened in camps in Germany. We simply made the entire county of Iraq one big concentration camp.

[Berry Cool]

12. Well, you know, the "age progressers" may not have done such a hot job

but let's not forget who the real wrongdoers are here: the people responsible for Anne Frank never having had the opportunity to get to age 80 and show us, for real, what she would have looked like. Or for her to write more books, meet more people, talk to us in person about what she went through. They are the ones who did her the worst disservice.

As for her belief that people are good at heart? Well. She was a teenager when she wrote that, and a relatively young one at that. And, as a teenager, which was as much as she ever got to be, that was what she wanted to believe. Maybe it was what she had to believe, in order to give herself hope to cling to every day. Who are we to judge?

Just as her face was frozen in time, so were her thoughts and ideas and philosophies. If we could "age progress" them--or if we didn't have to, because she actually made it to 80--she might have something different to say about human nature. But she might still say that there was a use for her belief in the basic goodness of humanity. That whether it was true or not, it served some purpose in her life, or served her better than did believing the worst of people.

Anyway, I don't think she died for that belief. And she is not responsible for those who die believing it.

[tomreedtoon]

15. Berry Cool, thank you for a very intelligent post.

The problem I always had with Anne Frank was that she was an innocent killed before she...well, lost her innocence. Children turn up simple solutions to complex problems, because...well, they're children. And it's terrible when an adult tries to model his or her life after the ideas of a child.

[Mojambo]

6. Kinda creepy. n/t

[BlueMTexpat]

8. I have visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.

What is still amazing to me is how so many people were able to remain hidden in a relatively small place so close to everyday activity. The courage of those Dutch citizens who risked (and ultimately lost) their own lives to keep the secret is awe-inspiring.

I would like to believe that I would have been able to rise to such a challenge. Thankfully, I have never been put to such a test where I could as an individual make such a real difference. It is all too easy to imagine what one would or should have done in retrospect, especially when from our vantage point, we know how WWII ultimately ended. At the time, the prospect of a Nazi victory was quite real.

Another thing that I also find amazing is that there are so many Holocaust survivors alive even today, after experiencing such horrors, especially when the aftermath was no picnic for them either. That generation is truly the "Greatest."

[sarge43]

9. I keep thinking of the books she would have written.

Multiply by 50M plus, so much potential destroyed.

[murielm99]

10. My mother is eighty.

She is alive and well. She goes out to see friends and relatives. She has her hair done. She goes to church. She has grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

It puts it into perspective to realize that Anne Frank could be doing the things my mother is doing. I wonder how many other DUers have living, healthy mothers and grandmothers who are eighty.

[Chulanowa]

14. Very interesting...

But I sprouted a headache when I read and saw the chunk of bad history floating in there.

"and to remember the loss of six million people in the Holocaust."

It always amazes me that people so frequently forget about the other six million who died in the Holocaust. Twelve million people were eradicated. And on that note... "loss" is a pretty poor choice of word. They weren't "lost". You won't find them under the couch.

[proteus_lives]

18. Something to think about.