Will we come to see Anne Frank differently now that her iconic diary is in the public domain?

Already scholars in Europe are posting it for academics — and maybe new translations, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It’s the result of a court battle by the copyright holding foundation, which ostensibly wanted to extend copyright to give royalties to charity. The foundation lost. And it lost more than control over money.

It can lose control of a carefully honed image of the young girl, universally mourned after dying in the Holocaust.

Haaretz quotes one of the first to publish the diary, Isabelle Attard, a French Parliament member whose grandparents died in the Holocaust. Attard said in a statement on her website: “Seventy years after the author’s death, the whole world can use, translate and interpret these works, and use them to create new ones.”

New ones. Think about that. Translation has power.

Read the article “Now The Dairy of Anne Frank Belongs to the World: What Will We Make of Her?” on cathylynngrossman.religionnews.com.