Anne Frank: Her World and Ours, Featuring Ruth Franklin

Event details Date: Thursday, October 22, 2026 Time: 5:00 PM Location: Online Type: Lecture / Workshop Campus area: University Center, Campuswide Audience: Staff and Faculty, Alumni, Parents and Family, Students, Undergraduate, Graduate and Professional Cost: Free About this event Ruth Franklin, author of “The Many Lives of Anne Frank” (2025), will discuss some lesser-known aspects of the diary’s creation and reception as well as the urgency of Anne Frank’s story in our current moment. Last January, as videos of violence by ICE agents made international headlines, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz noted the similarities between the raids on immigrants and “that story of Anne Frank.” Meanwhile, antisemitism is on the rise around the world, including in Amsterdam, Anne’s adopted home. Can Anne’s story still speak to the experience of persecuted Jews even as it becomes a metaphor for racism and xenophobia of all kinds? How to Attend / Submit a Question Because Ruth Franklin will be joining us from Europe, this program will be prerecorded and released on the UC San Diego Library YouTube Channel at 5 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday, October 22. A link to the recording will be added to this event listing when it is available. We invite you to submit a question for Ruth prior to the recording. Submit your question by 4 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, October 14. We'll do our best to address as many questions as possible during the program, though we cannot guarantee that every question will be answered. About the Speaker Ruth Franklin is a renowned book critic and former editor at The New Republic whose writing has appeared in major publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and Harper's. Her acclaimed 2016 biography, “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was widely named one of the year's best books by outlets such as The New York Times, Time magazine, and NPR. She is also the author of “A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction,” which was named a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Franklin has been recognized with prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center and the Leon Levy Center. About the Series The Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series is an education and outreach program co-sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies Program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and are available online. Official event details: https://calendar.ucsd.edu/event/HLHW-Ruth-Franklin