Except–spoiler alert–that it doesn’t. Dogar’s book, which I’ll be reviewing in the September issue of the Magazine, is a daring and intense version of the Anne Frank story told from Peter’s point of view. It’s quite a tightrope act–while Dogar freely speculates on what Peter may have said and felt and done, she does so while keeping Anne’s diary alive, well, and uncontradicted. Unlike Sadie, Dogar clearly read before she wrote.

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Just read that the multimillion-dollar-lawsuit-inspiring Misha, a Holocaust memoir in which the author claimed to have been sheltered by wolves for a time, has been exposed as a complete hoax. ['nother update: Globe reporter David Mehegan has more on the story.]

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It’s certainly not a learn-about-the-Holocaust movie in the way that Schindler’s List was. But the flaw of that movie was the way it wore its virtue on its sleeve, and the way it seemed to applaud its viewers for watching it: I felt like I was being congratulated for being a Morally Serious Person Made Even Better for watching it. This heavy handedness is also what makes it a high-school required-viewing staple, because there’s no chance kids will miss the message. Black Book offers the same message but, daringly or dumbly, packages it in an entertainment; Schindler’s List feels more like going to church (irony acknowledged). Compare and contrast–there’s a high school term paper I would have loved to write!

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Lois seems all for this idea (“It is always such a pleasure to hear of and from imaginative teachers like Doug Greener in Maple Grove who do more than just assign a book, and whose students will always remember what they have learned in his class”) but I have my doubts.

Oh, okay, I’m flat-out scandalized. What bothers me the most about this project is its profound anti-intellectualism. Through repetitive tasks (collecting shoelaces and tying them together) and the sheer accumulation of material objects, the point of the exercise is–what, exactly? That six million is a whole lot? Sixth-graders don’t know this? What will the participants understand about the Holocaust that truly challenging assignments–in history, literature, and the arts–could not teach them, better and with more nuance? I assume since the teacher was writing to Lowry, author of the frequently taught Number the Stars, that this shoelace-tying is but part of a larger curriculum on the Holocaust, but when it comes to “students remembering what they have learned in class,” I fear that what these students are going to remember is “sixth-grade, the year we tied together six million centimeters of shoelaces.”

What bothers me most about this project is that it fools kids think they have learned something about the Holocaust; hell, it fools them into thinking they have done something about the Holocaust. But what such a project does–at best–is makes kids feel something about the Holocaust. But that feeling is unearned; worse, it seems earned, because the kids have devoted so much (useless) labor to it.

But just tell me, please, that it’s not a curricular tie-in (heh) with a math lesson.

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The irony of the news of the Franks’ attempt to emigrate to the U.S. is, of course, that if they had, there would be no Diary, and thus, no news.

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