Archive for Thursday, September 22, 2005  Anne Frank story
still relevant  September 22, 2005   When the curtain rose on
the Walnut Street Theatre stage half a century ago, World War II
was as close to that audience as the Clinton presidency is to us
today, but the war against the Jews was far less understood.
There was no museum commemorating the Holocaust in the nation's
capital, no cinematic "Schindler's List," no class-action
lawsuits on behalf of survivors. "Night," Elie Wiesel's
harrowing account of the concentration camps, would not be
published in the United States for five years.  So when "The
Diary of Anne Frank" opened in Philadelphia on Sept. 15, 1955,
its message was unique and revelatory. Some had read the
recently published diary of the irrepressible Jewish girl who
hid with her family in a garret in Amsterdam for two years until
she was caught by the Nazis and died in the closing days of the
war.  But the theater brought her story to life as only theater
can. As the New York Times critic Walt