The Legacy of Anne Frank

by The Legacy of Anne Frank (retail) (epub)

  In 1998, Anne’s beloved chestnut tree was discovered to be diseased and withering. My colleague from the Anne Frank House Barry van Driel, who had first suggested and subsequently developed the concept of using the Anne Frank story for peer-to-peer education in the early 1990s, decided to live in London for a while. I was excited to be able to have his talent and skills for the Anne Frank Trust.

  One morning Barry and I were sipping coffee in my home, both feeling in a positive and creative mood. Our train of thoughts and ideas were flowing and we soon came up with a plan. If Anne Frank’s beloved tree was to die, then why couldn’t we encourage the planting of symbolic trees to replace it? How wonderful it would be to walk past trees in city centres and parks which were dedicated to Anne Frank and all the children who had been killed in wars and conflicts in the brutal twentieth century. It would stop people in their tracks and, for a brief moment on their way to work or play, encourage them to think about a world that could be better.

  Barry and I sat on my sofa and put together a tree-planting ceremony to accompany the physical act of putting a symbolic Anne Frank Tree into the ground. With his agreement, we included a poignant poem by the Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, which he had written following a visit to the Anne Frank House and fortuitously entitled ‘Anne Frank’s Tree’. We added suggested pieces of music and relevant readings from Anne’s diary, and even the wording for a plaque to be placed alongside the tree to explain its significance to passers-by. I then asked Barry if he could write a special pledge to be read out during the tree planting ceremony.

  On 12 June 1998, the sixty-ninth anniversary of Anne Frank’s birth, a group of people were gathered on the piazza of the British Library in central London for the planting of the very first Anne Frank Tree. The group included the Dutch Ambassador to the UK, Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias, Eva Schloss, Jan Erik Dubbelman, our Patron the South African born actress Janet Suzman, TV presenter Diane Louise Jordan and many of the Anne Frank Trust’s supporters.

  Over the next twelve months, a further 500 Anne Frank Trees were planted in city centres, parks and schools all over the UK. One of the most poignant that I dedicated was sited at the Soham Village College, a school in an idyllic Cambridgeshire village. In August 2002, three years after their Anne Frank Tree was planted, the school suffered a terrible tragedy. Two of their pupils, 10-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were abducted and murdered by the school’s own caretaker. The Anne Frank Tree went on to provide a place of comfort and solace to the traumatized and grieving pupils, around which children could sit with their thoughts.

  The Declaration we had written for the Anne Frank tree-planting ceremony then emerged from its place within the ceremony to follow its own independent trajectory. I often tell people that the Anne Frank Declaration was written on my sofa. I can’t remember if it actually was, or if Barry wrote the lines upstairs in my teenage son’s former bedroom (which had become Barry’s temporary office), or even in Barry’s own home. But I can say that it was definitely first read to me by Barry on my sofa and that he did so much creative writing and associated pen waving on our cream-coloured sofa that my husband Tony insisted we buy some sofa covers to protect it from the threat of Barry van Driel and his dangerously active pen.

  When Barry had been considering the wording of the pledge, an image of a boy he had met in Bosnia and Herzegovina came floating into his mind. He had encountered the boy when he was working on Bernard Kops’s play Dreams of Anne Frank, which he and his drama educator colleague Henrietta Seebohm had taken as a post-Bosnian war therapy programme to schools in Sarajevo. The play had been accompanied by the Anne Frank exhibition. The boy was called Adnan, a bright six-year-old child who lived in a neighbourhood called Hrasno, which had been heavily damaged by Serbian army shelling. Adnan was fluent in English. How could this be possible at such a young age? Well, it turns out that during the siege of Sarajevo, during the limited times when there was electricity, he had found respite from the incessant shelling and shooting by watching TV in the dark and damp cellar below his home. His choice of programmes was limited but he happened upon a channel which was in English only. So day and night there he was, sheltering from the terror of incessant bombing, but at the same time learning to speak English from the American Cartoon Network.

  After he had shown me what he felt should be the wording of the Declaration, Barry shared with me Adnan’s story. He related the horrific experience that had happened to the boy and his family on a day that should have been happy and special. So this was it, the event that Barry had been evoking when he sat and wrote the Anne Frank Declaration, the pledge to make the twenty-first century a better place for the world’s children.

  As he told me about that day in Sarajevo in 1995 as Adnan had described it to him, Barry’s eyes glazed over as if it was happening right there in front of him and as if Adnan was in the room with us in peaceful north London. Barry described to me how Adnan, his family and neighbours, found themselves confronted with hundreds of hostile soldiers who then started to use their captives as human shields. ‘On one such occasion’, recalled Barry, ‘Adnan’s terrified family were brought outside their house. As they were standing there they came under fire. A mortar shell landed nearby and everybody ran for their lives in different directions. An hour or so later the family came together again back in their home. His 13-year-old cousin walked in the room with Adnan’s older sister in her arms – dead. It was the day of her 8th birthday. I asked Adnan if he ever thought about this. He said, “Every day”.’

  Anne Frank’s beloved chestnut tree in Amsterdam was eventually felled not by disease, but by a heavy storm that occurred on the night of 23 August 2010. Saplings from the tree have been planted around the world, including in the UK, enhancing our own symbolic tree-planting project.

  Political activist Nic Careem heard that we were planning to get people to sign up to the Anne Frank Declaration. He became excited. He believed that all politicians should sign it and strive to abide by its wording. And so in June 1998, Nic organized a Declaration-signing event at the House of Commons. Three of the major political party leaders came along to speak and endorse it: William Hague (Conservative); Paddy, now Lord, Ashdown (Liberal Democrat) and Alex Salmond (Scottish Nationalist). Many other politicians came along to sign, including gold medal-winning Olympian Sebastian Coe, who went on to lead the organization of the 2012 London Olympics. Prime Minister Tony Blair then asked to sign it at 10 Downing Street.

  The Anne Frank Declaration had started its own life as a tool for betterment. In 1998, the South African President Nelson Mandela arrived in London for a visit. The South African High Commissioner Cheryl Carolus arranged for Mr Mandela to sign the Declaration at the High Commission in Trafalgar Square. As one heroic Nelson looked down on us from his majestic plinth in the square, another heroic Nelson emerged from a car and walked into the building. Nic and I were delighted to get a friendly wave and beaming smile as Mr Mandela walked towards the building, and even more thrilled to think he was about to sign the Anne Frank Declaration. He looked alarmingly frail at that time in 1998, but remarkably this great fighter lived for a further fifteen years.

  Encouraged by the response we had had to the Declaration so far, Nic’s ambition did not stop there. Who better to represent the whole world than the Secretary General of the United Nations himself? It took some doing, but after many calls and faxes to New York, on 13 January 1999 a delegation left London headed to New York for the UN. The costs of our New York trip were kindly sponsored by Lord Sainsbury of Turville. Virgin Atlantic Airways, as directed by Richard Branson himself, arranged for all sixteen in our delegation to travel in the comfort of Upper Class. Virgin’s CEO Steve Ridgway met us at Gatwick Airport and personally escorted us as honoured travellers to the plane. For such an auspicious occasion as the United Nations the Anne Frank Declaration needed to be suitably robed and protected for its long journey. An expensive leather goods emporium in London’s exclusive Bur
lington Arcade very generously donated a rich dark-green leather folder, and a professional calligrapher meticulously hand scribed the words on thick vellum paper.

  On the flight were myself and my husband Tony, Barry van Driel, Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s cousin Buddy Elias and his wife Gerti, John Bird (the charismatic founder of The Big Issue magazine), the footballer and UN Goodwill Ambassador John Fashanu, and several Members of Parliament. A three-man film crew was with us to capture the event. We were to be met at the United Nations by further additions to the delegation: Richard Branson; Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF; the UK Ambassador to the United Nations Sir Jeremy Greenstock; and our own Life President Bee Klug, who had been wintering in Florida. Bee was to be accompanied by her cousin and close friend Sharon Douglas, who subsequently became an active Board member of the Anne Frank Center USA. We were thrilled when we learnt that thanks to Nic’s perseverance the leader of our delegation would be none other than Mo Mowlam, the ebullient Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who had recently successfully brokered the Good Friday Agreement for the British Labour government.

  We awoke on the morning of 14 January to the alarming news that a severe ice storm had hit the eastern USA. All public transport was closed down and looking out of the hotel windows we saw that everything was either covered in a thick layer of white or was totally invisible. How could we get ourselves down to the United Nations building, let alone be joined by the other dignitaries? We knew that Richard Branson was flying in from Los Angeles to join us, would he make it?

  After trying to flag down the few yellow cabs that were on the hazardous roads that morning, we were forced to concede defeat. Eventually a limousine company sent a large van to collect our anxious group. It was a slow, slippery and painstaking journey along the deserted New York streets and, knowing that in any weather conditions the Secretary General’s diary would be still full, I wondered if our long trip across the Atlantic would be in vain, as we would miss our precious time slot. Thankfully, the multi-coloured line of international flags that signalled we were approaching the United Nations building finally came into view out of the whiteness. Bee Klug’s dogged determination not to miss this historic occasion meant we also soon spotted her petite fur-clad figure battling towards the UN entrance, with her cousin Sharon holding her tightly to guide her way.

  Richard Branson had indeed found himself stranded in Los Angeles due to the severity of the ice storm on the East Coast but sent instead Virgin’s US Chief Executive David Tate. We then received the news that Mo Mowlam was going to be severely delayed and realistically we decided she was probably not going to make it.

  Our group was shown into the Secretary General’s ante chamber, to await the arrival of Mr Annan. Suddenly the heavy wooden double doors flew open and in her famously rumbustious manner, in strode Mo Mowlam, apologizing to one and all for her lateness. It appeared she had sent her classically ministerial navy blue woollen suit to the dry cleaners ready for the occasion but the weather conditions had delayed its return. ‘Well folks’, explained Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, ‘I had two choices. Wait for the suit to be returned or come here stark bollock naked.’ Mo Mowlam certainly knew how to break the tension, a fact that Republican and Unionist representatives said had helped in the delicate peace talks the previous year. She then spotted her old friend John Bird among our group. ‘What the f*** are you doing here?’ she asked him as we anxiously awaited the arrival of the Secretary General.

  Kofi Annan and his aides duly appeared and the event became serious, important and emotive. Mr Annan is a Ghanaian whose Swedish wife Nane Lagergren is the great-niece of Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg. I had the honour of introducing and explaining the Anne Frank Declaration to Mr Annan. When I had finished my speech, Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias, an actor by profession, ceremoniously opened the green leather folder and slowly read the following words:

  Anne Frank is a symbol of the millions of children who have been victims of persecution. Anne’s life shows us what can happen when prejudice and hatred go unchallenged. Because prejudice and discrimination harm us all, I declare that:

  I will stand up for what is right and speak out against what is unfair and wrong.

  I will try to defend those who cannot defend themselves.

  I will strive for a world in which our differences will make no difference – a world in which everyone is treated fairly and has an equal chance in life.

  In response Secretary General Annan read his own welcoming statement which appropriately focused on the world’s young. He started by saying, ‘Anne Frank’s eternal words have inspired people of all ages, religions and nationalities, but they resound most powerfully among the young. That is one reason why the United Nations has taken her message to heart. For whom does the United Nations exist if not for the oppressed and vulnerable children and youth of our world?’ We nodded politely in agreement and I cast my mind back to the Trust’s first Patron Audrey Hepburn, herself a child helped by the United Nations in its early incarnation after the Second World War.

  Annan concluded with the words, ‘If Anne Frank, in her living hell, could summon the will to imagine a better, more peaceful world, a future free of suffering and persecution, then surely we can summon the will to make that day come to pass. In that spirit I am pleased to add my name to those who have signed this Declaration.’

  I looked over and smiled at Barry van Driel, who had written the words the Secretary General had just signed up to. Barry was deep in thought about the time he had been working in Bosnia, where, as a Dutchman, he had been accused by angry members of its Muslim community of the failings of the Dutch UN Peacekeeping force to stop the massacre in Srebrenica. Later that day Barry told me how he was feeling in the Secretary General’s office, ‘You know what, I felt that finally here in the United Nations there was a sense of recognition.’

  After Mr Annan and his team left the room, and our group had shaken our heads in disbelief that this had really happened, Buddy, Eva, Nic and I were taken to the auditorium where United Nations press conferences are held and there we conducted our own Anne Frank Trust press conference to a group of waiting journalists. Then our entourage were taken on a private tour of the United Nations building. We had organized lunch in one of the large function rooms in the building. Joining us was the President of the Anne Frank Center USA, Bergen-Belsen survivor Jack Polak, whom I had got to know on several previous visits to New York. Jack had helped to set up the Anne Frank Center and remained a loyal supporter and the guiding light of the organization until his death at age 102 in 2015.

  On that unforgettable morning at the United Nations, Mo Mowlam had apologized that she could not stay for the whole lunch as, due to the grounding of flights, a car was collecting her immediately after her speech. She was to be driven to Washington DC for an important White House meeting with President Clinton. I assumed it was connected to the Good Friday Agreement, but despite my curiosity I asked no questions. Mo was going to have her starter course, give her speech to our delegation and shoot straight off to DC.

  We sat down at the long four-sided table with Mo and myself sitting next to each other at the head. After the empty plate of her starter course was taken away, she stood up and started her speech, during which time everyone else’s main courses were served. In mid-sentence Mo looked down at my tranche of salmon which happened to be garnished with crisp thinly sliced fried onions. She abruptly stopped what she was saying about Anne Frank, and her story’s relevance to her own mission in Northern Ireland, and instead I heard the words, ‘Oh my god – please excuse me. I just can’t resist crispy fried onions.’ Mo’s left hand came down from holding the pages of her speech, hovered above my plate and then a handful of my crispy onions disappeared into Mo’s mouth. As if nothing unusual had happened she then continued her speech with the words, ‘Bigotry and intolerance forced Anne Frank to live an extraordinary life and robbed the world of an individual of such great promise. T
oday her vision drives me in my work in Northern Ireland.’

  Marjorie ‘Mo’ Mowlam was a larger-than-life character who cut through bullshit like a hot knife through butter. Despite her life-threatening brain tumour, which she insisted for many years was benign, she took on the seemingly intractable Northern Ireland situation with a combination of charm and force. Apparently during a particularly tough meeting, she once threw off her wig in frustration, exposing a scalp robbed of any hair by the courses of chemotherapy she was undergoing. A couple of weeks after the New York event I received a handwritten note on pale blue paper from her thanking me for the opportunity to be part of the Anne Frank Declaration. Mo Mowlam passed away in 2005 after finally admitting her brain tumour was malignant.

  The Anne Frank Declaration continued on its journey. President Bill Clinton was next on Nic’s hit list. Unfortunately, there was no time for the President to take part in a signing ceremony during his visit to Northern Ireland in 1999. However, later that year Clinton was waylaid by my supportive American cousin Sir Arthur Gilbert at a function in Los Angeles. Arthur, London-born and given an honorary knighthood in 2000 for his bequest of the Gilbert Collection of art treasures to London, was a serious funder of Clinton. The President could not refuse Arthur’s request, and he agreed to endorse the Anne Frank Declaration, although the opportunity did not transpire for him to physically sign the actual document.

  In his letter sent to the Anne Frank Trust, President Clinton wrote:

  In the wake of the dark histories of this century, marred by abundant evidence of man’s capacity for inhumanity, Anne Frank serves as a model of courage and hope. Her diary is an inspiration for young people and adults throughout the world.

  On the eve of a new century, the remembrance of Anne Frank and the many children like her, so tragically lost to war, demands that we work together as one to overcome intolerance, prejudice and bigotry. I am honoured to associate myself with Anne Frank as well as this very worthy declaration.