Natalie Portman Compares Anne Frank To Current Migrants Hiding From Ice
In 1997, novelist and cultural critic Cynthia Ozick wrote an article for the New Yorker criticizing the “distortion” of the historical and literary figure of Anne Frank.
“Complicit in this shallowly upbeat view,” she wrote, are two unlikely confederates — Frank’s father Otto, and a promising child actress named Natalie Portman.
Portman starred on Broadway in a revival of “The Diary of Anne Frank” that same year as a 16-year-old, and the comment she made about Frank’s diary that damned her to Ozick was this: “It’s funny, it’s hopeful, and she’s a happy person.”
On Tuesday, Portman, now 38 and one of the most famous actors alive, posted on Instagram about studying the role of Frank, comparing the experience of Frank and her family hiding in the Secret Annex to that of migrants hiding from Immigration And Custom Enforcement agents.
“When I was 16 I visited Anne Frank’s house with Miep Gies, the woman who bravely hid Anne and her family when the Nazis were rounding up Jews in Amsterdam and much of Europe,” Portman captioned a snapshot of herself as a teen, standing in front of the trick-staircase that opened the door to the annex. “Today, I shudder at the thought of a young girl hiding somewhere in my own country, afraid to turn on her light or make a noise or play outside lest she get rounded up by our government.” She added the hashtags, “notinmyname” and “notinmycountry.”
The Trump administration moved forward over the weekend with plans to target and remove undocumented immigrants who have received final orders for deportation. Several publications have reported on migrants who cannot afford to miss work yet are terrified to leave their houses, wary of being picked up by ICE and never seeing their homes again. Portman may have been indirectly referencing the story of Liza, a teenager in Passaic, New Jersey, who told the New York Times that she and her family huddled in their house with the lights off as ICE agents waited outside. Elena, a 41-year-old housekeeper in Miami, told BuzzFeed that she and her teenage daughter and husband leave the lights off even when they are home, fearing that ICE officers will seize them and send them to Nicaragua, even though her daughter is an American citizen who has never spent time in that country.
Portman draws a direct parallel between those women women — literally in the dark, crammed into small spaces with their family members, trying to stay quiet and undiscovered — and Anne Frank, in hiding during the Holocaust.
