By Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay '97

Anne Frank and Me by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld ’77 G.P. Putnam’s Sons (2001)

Millions of people, many of them schoolchildren, have been moved and transformed by the words of the Holocaust's most famous casualty, Anne Frank. While The Diary of Anne Frank is undoubtedly the most widely read work concerning genocide, for some contemporary teenagers it may feel like irrelevant ancient history.

Jeff Gottesfeld '77 and his wife, Cherie Bennett, addressed that concern with their play turned novel, Anne Frank and Me. In 1995 Gottesfeld, a theater producer and writer, and Bennett, also a writer, co-wrote and produced the play for young adults after extensively researching the Holocaust and interviewing its survivors. The play's off-Broadway run and other productions received several awards, and The New York Times called it "eloquent and poignant."

To further increase Holocaust awareness in today's teenagers, Gottesfeld and Bennett have turned the play into a young adult novel that brings to life the realities of Nazi-occupied Paris. Like the play, Anne Frank and Me focuses on present-day, 10th-grade, suburban American Nicole Burns, who is indifferent to the Holocaust and anything else that doesn't revolve around her high school crush. It is only after the sound of gunfire interrupts a class trip to an Anne Frank museum exhibit that history literally comes alive for her.

"Now, everything had changed," Nicole says, as she is transported back in time to live as a World War II Jew in 1942-44. She eventually goes into hiding with her family before being arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Nicole returns to her present–read the novel to learn how she does it–a sensitive, strong and emotionally mature individual.

Modern readers will never meet Anne Frank in person, as Nicole does on a cattle car destined for Auschwitz. But thanks to Gottesfeld and Bennett, they will better relate to the sufferings of others, no matter how long ago or far away.