JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Anne and me

By Ami Eden · June 30, 2009

George Stevens Jr., the associate producer of the 1959 film version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” writes in The Washington Post:

Anne Frank would have celebrated her 80th birthday this month. The diary she wrote as a teenager in a cramped Amsterdam attic lives in the hearts of readers across the world. Her story has been a continuing inspiration to many and made her one of the most enduring voices of World War II.

I became connected to her story 50 years ago, when my father asked me to be associate producer of "The Diary of Anne Frank," the first American motion picture to deal with the Holocaust. He and I flew to Munich in May 1957 to begin our research. This was my father's first time in Europe since his service as a lieutenant colonel in charge of a combat motion picture unit photographing the war in Europe. It was a rare opportunity for a son to relive his father's war. …

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