Is it me, or

[Tangerine LaBamba]

is this a really mean woman?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/29/anne-franks-best-friend-r_n_147146.html

[yellerpup]

1. She may be losing it.

She came off as a crabby and embittered to me. I don't think she has a clue of how ugly her words sound. Imagine being jealous of a little girl who died decades ago from typhus! Poor old thing.

[DutchLiberal]

2. Er... why? Which part was mean?

I don't get it.

[blaze]

3. Her comments didn't strike me as mean

or bitter or jealous...

Maybe it's just me.

But I suspect she recognized that they might be, which would explain why she has remained silent for so long.

[Dis Pater]

4. which one?

both?

[Berry Cool]

5. Maybe she's just trying to make it possible for people to see Anne as the teenager she was

before she inadvertently became famous. Not to disillusion people or destroy her image, but to reveal her in all dimensions as a person.

I'm sure that before Anne went into hiding, and even afterward, she had the same faults and foibles as many other teenagers--as any other human being. We don't know what she would have been like as an adult, either--which of her traits she would have outgrown and which would have stayed.

It must be strange to have been the childhood friend of a person who died young and became famous and lionized after her death. Sometimes it must grate a little bit--not because one is a mean or envious person necessarily, but because it's so easy for the world to ignore and not realize that long ago, you knew the person it now holds in such worshipful regard as, well, an ordinary person.

That may well be how this woman feels. She's not trying to ruin people's impression of Anne Frank, but to make it more multidimensional, bring the reality of her back to life, in a way.