The Abandonment Of The Jews: America And The Holocaust, 1941-1945 – David S. Wyman, 1984 ★★★

The Cavalry Took Its Time

On Sunday, August 20, 1944, 127 American heavy bombers flew over Upper Silesia in western Poland, dropping 1,336 500-pound high-explosive bombs on synthetic-oil plants fueling Germany’s war against Russia. They left alone another Nazi operation just five miles away, a murder complex at Auschwitz.

A targeted operation against Auschwitz that day could have saved tens of thousands, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, arrested in Holland earlier that same month and transported to Auschwitz in September. Instead, then and later, Americans ignored the opportunity to strike a blow for humanity, particularly Jews. According to David Wyman, this callousness characterized American strategy throughout World War II.

The Diary Of A Young Girl – Anne Frank, 1952 ★★★½

All She Wanted Was to Live Forever

Anne Frank belongs to the world, something truer today than ever before. Seventy years after the year of her confirmed death, her famous memoir of a life in hiding fell out of copyright law on January 1, 2016, meaning it can now be printed by anyone.

“I want to go on living even after my death!” she wrote in one of her diary entries. And now she shall, in cyberspace, with people free to arrange her thoughts and dreams with hypertext links and perhaps a GIF animation showing the five seconds when Anne poked her head out a window and was caught on a home movie.