Reading Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel: Voice and Gender in Stories about the Holocaust

In this article, the author considers two life stories, Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl and Night, that have played major roles in shaping collective memories of the Holocaust in the United States. These collective representations, including widely read personal accounts of the Holocaust, add to and surpass personal experience as a source of knowledge, the author argues. The two stories are examined through lenses of gender. The author draws from the Durkheimian tradition of collective representations and argues that the reception and popularity of this pair of stories have been constituted by their gendered nature.