Frankly speaking Penobscot Theatre production sparks memories, discussion among veterans

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Among the eager crowd Monday night at Penobscot Theatre’s dress rehearsal of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Opera House in Bangor was a solitary older man wearing a baseball cap. He sat quietly waiting for the show to start, while fidgety youngsters chattered around him. The seats that night were nearly filled with schoolchildren. But there was also a group of American veterans who had been invited to attend the run-through of the show as a tribute to their service in the military. It was, after all, Veterans Day.

The performance, which I found both entertaining and alarming – an unexpected combination, to be sure – went surprisingly well for being five shows away from Friday’s opening night, and the audience hung on every word. If the actors hadn’t quite mastered their lines or the lighting cues were undergoing adjustments, few people noticed. Because nearly everyone knew the outcome of the story portrayed onstage, it wasn’t suspense that held the attention of this group so breathlessly.

What is it that makes us want to hear a story again and again, even when we know the ending? And more: when we know the ending will be tragic?

Of course, it has to do with the telling, and on this night, the story unfolded with vigor and resonance and a magnetic, quotidian familiarity – even though it took place more than 50 years ago. But it also has to do with determination and memory.

Remembrance, after all, is the posthumous mission of Anne Frank. Her words have become a talisman for the declaration “never again.”

The diary, which is said to be the most read book in the world after the Bible, records the story of a smart, writerly adolescent girl and her family hiding during the German occupation of Holland. As Jews, the Franks, who lived in Amsterdam, were forced to flee their home in search of a haven against Hitler’s rampage across Europe. They found sanctuary in a sequestered closetlike space – the annex – behind a bookshelf in an office building where Mr. Frank worked. For nearly two years, Anne, her parents and her sister lived with four other Jewish people in complete confinement – except for the freedom of their minds and the hope that drove their survival.

By the end, they were living on cabbage and potatoes. They were pale and thin, and Anne had outgrown her shoes. Then, just as liberation was spreading across the continent, the Nazis discovered the Franks upstairs hiding place, and weeks before the end of the war, all but Anne’s father perished.

While Wendy Kesselman’s unsentimental stage adaptation emphasizes the everyday squabbles of family life, the joys of friendship and the power of will, the ending is a dark cloud perniciously hovering over the action. Up above the set at the Opera House, in the fractured scaffolding of rafters, the threat of Nazi Germany looms. The wooden lacework disturbingly suggests the shattered glass of storefronts, the unreachable trees beyond the Franks blackened windows, the fences around the perimeters of death camps, and the swastika itself. All emblems of horror.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I thought of World War II in terms of parades and monuments. I pictured men my father’s age placing their hands proudly on their hearts for the national anthem. I knew about the horrors. I saw the photos. But somehow, I never thought about the death camps.

Suddenly, the two-hour show at the Opera House was over and the Franks had been hauled away and I was wishing Anne Frank were alive and I thought of all the people in my life who might have met with the same fate in Europe in the 1940s. And my eyes landed again on the man who had been sitting alone. People were bustling out of the theater, but he was standing, his hands in his pockets, his gaze turned toward the eerie set.

“Sir, are you a veteran?” I said interrupting his contemplation. When he looked in my direction, I was unprepared for the intensity, the deep pain and sadness in his eyes. He nodded.

“I helped liberate Buchenwald,” he whispered, pulling a red handkerchief from his pocket and lifting it gently to his eyes.

Gingerly, I placed my arm on his shoulder. “This must have been an emotional evening for you,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. “Will you tell me about what happened?”

“I can’t,” he said. So we stood side by side, for only a few seconds, observing his private silence.

Later that night, I spoke with a group of veterans about their experience of watching Anne Frank’s story. These men – and they all were men, though several of their wives were sitting nearby – represented every arm of the military and several wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm. Many of them volunteer at Cole Land Transportation Museum to share their first-hand war stories with young people who interview them as “ambassadors of patriotism.”

That is one of the missions of Galen Cole, museum founder and WWII vet, who pledged to God, when he survived a shrapnel explosion on the front lines in Europe, that he would do his utmost to help others and leave every community better than he found it. This year, Cole won the Americanism Award, issued nationally each year by the Purple Heart Association. Cole helped coordinate the “Anne Frank” night for the vets. He also attended the performance with five of his grandchildren, who ranged in school years from third to seventh grade. He anticipated that the children would make him leave at intermission but, because they found Anne so delightful and spunky, they pleaded to stay. The young girl’s dreams and mischief and spark had grabbed their attention and, like all grandchildren, they wanted to hear the end of the story.

The show’s director, Laura Schutzel, said her goal is to ask: what is the story and how does it relate to each person in the audience? But, she admitted, “I can’t say that with this story because it has affected me more than most projects. When I close the book at the end of the night and leave the rehearsal hall, the story doesn’t go away.”

In part, that’s why Cole invited the vets to hang back and talk about the show. Vets, more than most people, realize the importance that stories play in relaying the lessons and ravages of war.

“We have to remember the history so it won’t happen again,” said Barry Bennett, a veteran of both Vietnam and Desert Storm. “It’s a lot closer than 1944. It’s here in 2000. Anne Frank’s family was very, very strong. And the young people here can get a lot more out of this show than out of what we can tell them. I was not in World War II, but I was in a place that had a dictator and I know it could happen again.”

It is also true that not all vets want to talk about their experiences in battle. One man said he wouldn’t talk to me about the war for reasons he was unwilling to explain, and he couldn’t talk to me about the play because he was unable to hear the actors. His hearing was destroyed during the war.

But those who wanted to talk were eager to share their stories. They spoke of fear, of gunfire, of the cruelty and of the camaraderie. They described the sights, the smells, the injustices that reminded them daily of what they were fighting for over there.

“I wonder if people today see Anne Frank’s life or read the book and consider it as something that really happened,” worried Francis Zelz, a Navy man who was in the South Pacific.

Raymond Perkins, who was in the National Guard, pointed to his wife across the aisle. “What I fought for is sitting over there,” he said. “We’ve been married for 59 years.”

Perkins, as with many of his military friends, expressed faith in young people today. “I’m proud of them,” he said, and he feels confident that they, too, will rise to the challenges of defending America if the time comes. “I would be proud if my son or my grandson would fight for this country. If I were younger, I would go again.”

At the end of the evening, a man who is nearly 80 slipped me an envelope. “Here’s more information,” he told me. Later, I read his four-page, hand-written account of departing from Bangor for World War II, of becoming a soldier, and developing a secret code to reveal his location in letters to his family. One of his biggest points of pride was being born in 1923 on June 6, which would eventually become known as D-Day.

As I was leaving the theater, the soldier from Buchenwald appeared again. I hadn’t known that he remained after the show, but I realized quickly that he must have stayed in the shadows listening to the discussion. I placed my hand on his shoulder again. He was more composed this time and smiled at me. We chatted and he told me he had received the Bronze Star medal for his three campaigns in Europe, one of which was the Battle of the Bulge.

“You must be very brave,” I said to him, feeling an unexpected wash of patriotism and gratitude.

“Bravery,” he said, “comes natural when you are out there.”

Out there, I thought, as soldiers. Out there, like Anne Frank.

Penobscot Theatre will present “The Diary of Anne Frank” Nov. 15-Nov. 24 at the Opera House in Bangor. For tickets, call 942-3333.