In 1967 American Mercury published an article by Teressa Hendry, entitled “Was Anne Frank’s Diary a Hoax?” in which she suggested that the diary might be the work of Meyer Levin and that if it was, a massive fraud had been perpetrated.{39} In a fashion that will by now have become familiar to readers of this book, Hendry’s allegations were repeated by other deniers as established fact. This is their typical pattern of cross-fertilization as they create a merry-go-round of allegations. In Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last, Harwood repeated these charges, unequivocally declaring the diary to be a hoax.{40} In one short paragraph in his book, Arthur Butz likewise stated that he had “looked it over” and determined that the diary was a hoax.{41}
In his 1975 attack on the diary, David Irving relied on the familiar charge that an American court had “proved” that a New York scriptwriter had written it “in collaboration with the girl’s father.” In 1978 Ditlieb Felderer, publisher of the sexually explicit cartoons of Holocaust survivors, produced a book devoted to certifying the diary as a hoax. He repeated the Levin charge but then went on to label Anne a sex fiend and the book “the first child porno.”{42} (Some of his chapter titles are indicative of his approach: “Sexual Extravaganza” and “Anne’s Character—Not Even a Nice Girl.” Felderer’s charges are designed to build on what is often part of the inventory of antisemitic stereotypes: Jews, unnaturally concerned about sex, are also producers of pornography designed to corrupt young children.)
In 1975 Heinz Roth, a West German publisher of neo-Nazi brochures, began to circulate pamphlets calling the diary a forgery actually written by a New York playwright. He cited Irving’s and Harwood’s findings as “proof” of his charges. When asked to desist by Otto Frank, he refused, claiming, in the familiar defense used by deniers, that he was only interested in “pure historical truth.” At this point Frank took him to court in West Germany. Roth defended himself by citing statements by Harwood and Butz declaring the diary to be fraudulent. In addition, Roth’s lawyers produced an “expert opinion” by Robert Faurisson, among whose charges to prove the diary fictitious was that the annex’s inhabitants had made too much noise. Anne wrote of vacuum cleaners being used, “resounding” laughter, and noise that was “enough to wake the dead.”{43} How, Faurisson asked, could people in hiding, knowing that the slightest noise would be their undoing, have behaved in this fashion and not been discovered?{44} But Faurisson quoted the diary selectively, distorting its contents to build his case. When Anne wrote of the use of the vacuum cleaner, she preceded it by noting that the “warehouse men have gone home now.”{45} The scene in which she described resounding laughter among the inhabitants of the annex took place the preceding evening—a Sunday night—when the warehouse would have been empty.{46} When she wrote that a sack of beans broke open and the noise was enough to “wake the dead,” Faurisson neglected to quote the next sentence in the diary: “Thank God there were no strangers in the house.”{47}
In his description of his visit to Otto Frank, Faurisson engaged in the same tactics he used in relation to his encounter with the official from the Auschwitz museum. He tried to make it appear as if he had caught Frank in a monstrous lie: “The interview turned out to be grueling for Anne Frank’s father.”{48} Not surprisingly Frank’s description of the interchange differs markedly, and he challenged the veracity of much of what Faurisson claimed he said. Faurisson also claimed to have found a witness who was “well informed and of good faith” but who refused to allow his name to be made public. Faurisson assured readers that the name and address of this secret witness had been placed in a “sealed envelope.” As proof of this evidence he included a photograph of the sealed envelope as an appendix to his “investigation.”{49} In 1980 the court, unconvinced by Faurisson’s claims, found that Roth had not proved the diary false.
In 1977 charges were again brought against two men in the West German courts for distributing pamphlets charging that the diary was a hoax. The Bundeskriminalamt (The BKA, or Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau) was asked to prepare a report as to whether the paper and writing material used in the diary were available between 1941 and 1944. The BKA report, which ran just four pages in length, did not deal with the authenticity of the diary itself. It found that the materials had all been manufactured prior to 1950–51 and consequently could have been used by Anne. It also observed, almost parenthetically, that emendations had been made in ballpoint pen on loose pages found with the diary. The ink used to make them had only been on the market since 1951.{50} (The BKA did not address itself to the substance of the emendations, nor did it publish any data explaining how it had reached this conclusion. When the editors of the critical edition of the diary asked for the data they were told by the BKA that they had none.{51})
Given the history of the editing of the diary it is not surprising that these kinds of corrections were made. This did not prevent Der Spiegel from publishing a sensationalist article on the diary which began with the following boldface paragraph: “‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ was edited at a later date. Further doubt is therefore cast on the authenticity of that document.” The author of the article did not question whether these corrections had been substantive or grammatical, whether they had been incorporated into the printed text, or when they had been made. Nor did he refer to them as corrections as the BKA had. He referred to the possibility of an imposter at work and charged that the diary had been subjected to countless “manipulations.”
These sensationalist observations notwithstanding, Der Spiegel dismissed the charge made by David Irving and other deniers that Levin wrote the diary as an “oft-repeated legend.” It also stressed that those who wished to shed doubt on the diary were the same types who wished to end “gas chamber fraud.”{52}
On Otto Frank’s death in 1980, the diary was given to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. By that time the attacks on it had become so frequent and vehement—though the charges that were made were all essentially the same—that the institute felt obliged to subject the diary, as well as the paper on which it was written, glue that bound it together, and ink to a myriad of scientific tests in order to determine whether they were authentic. They also tested postage stamps, postmarks, and censorship stamps on postcards, letters, and greeting cards sent by Anne and her family during this period (in addition to the diary the institute examined twenty-two different documents containing writings by Anne and her family). Forensic science experts analyzed Anne’s handwriting, paying particular attention to the two different scripts, and produced a 250-page highly technical report of their findings.
The reports found that the paper, glue, fibers in the binding, and ink were all in use in the 1940s. The ink contained iron, which was standard for inks used prior to 1950. (After that date ink with no, or a much lower, iron content was used.) The conclusions of the forensic experts were unequivocaclass="underline" The diaries were written by one person during the period in question. The emendations were of a limited nature and varied from a single letter to three words. They did not in any way alter the meaning of the text when compared to the earlier version.{53} The institute determined that the different handwriting styles were indicative of normal development in a child and left no doubt that it was convinced that it had all been written in the same hand that wrote the letters and cards Anne had sent to classmates in previous years.