muted memory: the reception of the diary of Anne Frank in Poland

The Polish response to Anne Frank's diary reveals complex feelings of guilt, indifference and even hostility. For 32 years, the book was practically unavailable in Poland; its first Polish edition appeared in 1957, followed by others in 1960 and in the 1990s. Some Polish reviewers sought to Christianise Anne Frank and present her as a kind of saint; others more sensibly warned against attempts to turn the diary into a cliche or sentimental postcard. By the 1990s, after the topic had been virtually absent from the Polish scene since the late 1960s, it made a gradual but rather muted return.