Noa Argamani’s Secret Annex

Perhaps this is something one shouldn’t say out loud, but when I was a kid, I was obsessed with Anne Frank. It’s not that I was interested in history, or her message of hope and humanity. I was obsessed with her diary the way I was obsessed with “My Side of the Mountain” and “The Swiss Family Robinson.” I thought of it as a kind of adventure story — one which was terribly thrilling and romantic. It got to the point that I even begged my dad to let me have a bookcase door for my bedroom. He, to his credit, ignored this bizarre request. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that there were others who read Anne Frank this way when they were kids. This probably has something to do with the fact that nothing truly terrible actually happens in the diary. It does not end with her death at Bergen-Belsen. Rather, it simply ends. 

According to Cynthia Ozick, this has profoundly shaped our understanding, or misunderstanding, of Anne’s life. “The diary is incomplete, truncated, broken off,” she writes in her essay “Who Owns Anne Frank?” Our focus on her time in the annex, and our obsession with her positive message, is symptomatic of an “implausible and ugly innocence” as well as an inability to confront the dehumanizing reality of her final days.

It wasn’t until I was a teen, when my parents took us to see “The Diary of Anne Frank” on stage, that I began to have some sense of what really happened to her after the voice of the diary stops. The image of the Gestapo, guns drawn, breaking into the annex lingered in my mind for years. 

Anne in the diary was verbose and witty. I related to her. She felt like a friend. But this new image of Anne was impassively silent. I recognized no shred of myself in her. She didn’t speak to me, and I dared not speak to her in return. 

Over the past week, I have been thinking of both Annes, and the moment that separates them — the moment when we hear a bang at the door. The reason I am thinking of this is because of the recent rescue of Noa Argamani and three other hostages from Gaza.

Like Anne, Noa was secreted away in an apartment while a war raged outside, unsure if she would ever again be allowed to walk free. Like Anne, Noa was living a completely ordinary life until war intruded upon her and changed it forever. Like Anne, Noa became a symbol —and a polarizing one at that. For some, she was a symbol of innocence lost and humanity caught in the jaws of hatred and brutality. Others tore down her poster, either justifying or denying what was done to her, and what was still being done.

This comparison forces us to confront all that hasn’t changed for Jews since the Holocaust. Though the dynamics are very different, we have to face it: Then, as now, there are Jewish men and women hidden away in secret annexes and dark tunnels.

Though the dynamics are very different, we have to face it: Then, as now, there are Jewish men and women hidden away in secret annexes and dark tunnels.

That said, we might also take this moment to recognize what has changed for us. When armed men beat down the door of Noa’s secret annex, they were not there to take her to a concentration camp, but to bring her back home to her family and her people. 

To a Zionist, this is a remarkable tikkun — a triumphant reversal of the dynamics of Jewish history. Apparently, there is no way to escape the Jewish condition. State or no state, there will always be those who wish us harm and who have the capacity to inflict it upon us. But the rescue of Noa Argamani reminds us that for us — unlike for Anne — rescue is at least possible. A bang on the door is not necessarily an enemy. 

But the most powerful difference of all between the two young women is this: While Anne’s story was “incomplete, truncated” and “broken off,” Noa’s story continues. 

Anne was silenced by death and later transformed into a symbol — the meaning of which has been decided for her by others. For Noa, all of this is reversed. Her presence and her voice have been returned to us. As to what her story means, for Zionism or humanity or anything else, that is something she will have to tell us herself.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.