The Obsession

by Meyer Levin

The WWII reporter and “most significant American Jewish writer of his time” recounts his decades-long battle to stage Anne Frank’s diaries ( Los Angeles Times ).As a war correspondent in Europe during World War II, Meyer Levin was among the first to report on the horrors of Nazi occupation. Also a successful novelist, he desperately wanted to bear witness to what he saw in literary form. Then, in 1951, he read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. It was precisely the voice he had been searching for—and he became determined to bring Anne’s story to America as a Broadway play.The Obsession is Levin’s candid account of this ill-fated project and the mania to see it through that gripped him for twenty years. Though Levin began writing his adaptation with the support of Anne’s father, Otto, he was eventually replaced with non-Jewish writers. Refusing to let Anne’s story be sanitized, Levin fought for his version in and out of courtrooms in a protracted battle that nearly destroyed both his family and his career.In this extraordinary memoir, Levin explores the nature of Jewishness, the price of assimilation, the writer’s obligation to himself and to his subject, and the search for identity and purpose.

Genres: Holocaust

316 pages, Hardcover

First published February 12, 1974

Reviews

[Sissy Boy Bot]

This boy first read Anne Frank's diary in Paris, and he liked it a lot, so he wrote to Otto Frank (Anne's daddy) who gave him permission to create a play for it in the United States, but then a "literary mafia" took over and sidelined him. Lillian Hellman (who lied about moving money through Nazi Germany to aid resistance fighters) calls Meyer's version "too Jewish," so Lillian becomes a star villain, leading Meyer to quip, "Again, Lillian Hellman."

Meyer labels his drama "the Anne Frank affair," and it was to "grip, occupy, haunt, and all but devour me." After he fails to persuade Otto to intercede with the suppression of his version, Otto becomes like Lillian. Meyer tells Otto, "You have been my Hitler." Meyer is ultra dramatic, and he marvels at "all this Broadway drama over the diary of a dead Jewish girl." Meyer wonders if he subconsciously wants the persecution as a way to "identify with the Jews of Europe."

He tries to avoid court and has a "justice hearing" at Park Avenue Synagogue, but then he goes to court. He gets $50k, then that is taken away, and he gets only his legal fees paid for, and he has to sign something that affirms that Otto is "honorable." He finally get performances in Israel, but the Otto team finds out and stops them. He gets someone to print his play, and he sends them out. Meyer says, "I could not even speak of what I was doing." Like Anne, Meyer has a secret.

For Meyer, Anne symbolizes a larger truth about the Holocaust, and he speaks about her like a girl Jesus Christ. He says, "Anne Frank's affirmation, stifled in the throat of her every resurrection, is the key to a universal human sense of continuation." Like Christ, Anne, through her diary, has risen. Meyer argues that Hellman and others suppressed Anne's Jewishness, yet Jewishness is what gave Anne "her universality." In the popular version, Anne doesn't declare, "We are Jews," and Margot doesn't pine for a Jewish "homeland." For the Holocaust to be something else besides "grotesque," it must be "communicated in all its depth." Meyer tried to do that, but Otto and others hushed it.