Among the reasons Anne Frank is the Nazis’ best known, most widely beloved victim is that she was so open about her flaws and struggles—so insistently honest about her humanity. Of course she hurt people’s feelings at times, and she probably was a brat on occasion. It’s also very possible Anne thought Helga was a brat sometimes, too. War takes us as it finds us; it doesn’t wait until we’ve perfected ourselves before it rips into our lives.

…Most Americans turn hushed and reverent at the mention of the Holocaust’s victims. This is well-intended; reverence seems like a necessary corrective, especially in a time when manifestations of racism and anti-Semitism are on the rise. But reverence also does damage. When people insist on the perfection of martyrs, they forget that one of the great violences accomplished by the Nazis was in robbing their victims of their right to be seen as real, complex people. In the eyes of the Nazis, Anne and Helga weren’t people; they were insects, subhumans.

The remedy for that dehumanization isn’t deification. Yet that’s exactly what we flirt with when we insist that the people murdered by Hitler were perfect. Idealizing the Nazis’ victims—cordoning them off from the flaws the rest of humanity is subject to—may be an attempt to rebalance the scales, but there’s something deeply untrustworthy about it.

Outrage is easy. It’s less painful than grief, less gutting than fear. And because it’s easy, it sneaks in, insidious and distracting. The impulse to be outraged on Anne Frank’s behalf isn’t in fact aimed at protecting Anne Frank; Anne Frank, as we know, is beyond protection. We give in to outrage because its unacknowledged function is to protect us—all of us, the living.

Why we need to make our victims seem perfect.

hmmm