You know, I kinda agree with Justin Bieber. I bet Anne Frank, the tragic young girl, slaughtered by the Nazi's after hiding in an attic and writing a beautifully normal diary that survived her murder in a concentration camp.
After visiting Frank's house in Amsterdam, Bieber wrote in her visitors book: ""Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."
Of course, the usual suspects are damning Justin Bieber for the self-serving nature of his comment. Me? I don't see it in the slightest.
1. How else do you relate to somebody, if you really care about them, then subjectively.
2. He might very well be right, one would certainly hope the 13 year girl would have had a life much like any other 13 year old girl if she had been born in 1990 USA.
3. The most difficult thing is making historic figures humans, taking them away from the forces of fate and history and re-imagining them as your contemporary. Not quite if Frank had not been slaughtered but more if in some weird alternate reality you knew her, she was your friend, girlfriend, Bieber lover. At a concert. in a high school, a cheerleader… a different Frank.
I do this, imagine the humanity of historic figures, from time to time: to have known Shakespeare or Nabakov or Armstrong, to be able to bring them out of the history books and back to life, to marvel in whatever it is, was. MLK or Malcolm X.
What Bieber has done, is take Frank from the history books, from the Sainthood and martrydom, and reimagined her as a Bieber fan. That's what should be done, that's how you keep memories alive.