Ferryhill’s town councillors gave me one of my proudest moments at the Trust when, having rather furtively asked Jamie Arden for a copy of our charity’s bright green and black logo, it suddenly appeared for a week prior to local elections in the form of a flag flying prominently above the town hall. The councillors saw the Anne Frank Trust flag as a symbol of defiance against extremist politics.
For one Anne Frank Ambassador training day, I visited the north-east city of Gateshead, where I met 14-year-old Joe. During the course of our chat he shared with me that his Mum had seen a transformation in his behaviour at home. Joe admitted that before he had become an Anne Frank educator he preferred his own company and to him family mealtimes were a social ordeal. But now he knew he was more communicative at home and actually enjoyed mealtime chat with his family. I thought that was a bold revelation from a 14-year-old boy.
Nathan was also a great exemplar from this region. He was a bullied autistic boy attending a special needs school, who had retired into his shell until he had become an Anne Frank Ambassador. His social transformation had been so great that it had allowed this young teenager to come on his first-ever visit to London (accompanied by his grandfather, who had also never before been to London), roll up at one of the city’s most exclusive five-star hotels and stride confidently on to the ballroom stage, where he addressed 600 business people at our Anne Frank Trust lunch in 2016.
Looking around the packed room, he spoke without hesitation to tell them,
I’ve faced prejudice because of my autism, and I have seen how people think differently of me because of it. There are people in my own community in County Durham who support racist groups, and if they knew the facts, rather than just the propaganda, they would change their minds. Doing the Anne Frank project has given me a completely different view than these kinds of groups. I’m now able to challenge prejudice when I’m confronted with it. I always try to help others who don’t understand, and I challenge those who do understand, but spread hatred.
What Nathan stated so articulately echoes what we hear from young Anne Frank peer educators up and down our country, and if I tried to capture even a selection of the best responses this book would run to 5,000 pages.
Bradford in West Yorkshire is, conversely to the villages of County Durham, a very multicultural city with an Asian population making up nearly one quarter of the population. During the Industrial Revolution the woollen mills, fed by the soft waters of the nearby Yorkshire dales, had attracted first an Irish immigration and then German-Jewish merchants, who opened export businesses in a network of streets that became known as Little Germany. After the Second World War came Poles and Ukrainians, and then from the 1950s immigrants from India and Pakistan started arriving in the city to work in the woollen mills, which were in those days still flourishing.
The Metropolitan Council of Bradford have been hosting and funding an Anne Frank project over seven consecutive years. Jani Rashid, the former Head of Diversity & Cohesion for Bradford council’s Education Department, crystallized why, by describing a change he had seen in one student. ‘The project has been a real success for our students in terms of raising their self-esteem, aspiration and confidence. I could never have imagined that the pupil I saw three years ago, giggling through a Holocaust Memorial Day service, was going to be as committed as she is now to human rights issues and to making a difference.’
Jani Rashid has since retired and returned to his former home in Indonesia, but not before leaving his own rather unusual mark on his adopted city. Bradford’s Victorian synagogue, one of the oldest in Britain, was falling into disrepair and its tiny remaining congregation were struggling to raise the funds for repair works. Jani mounted a fundraising campaign in his own local Muslim community, and as a gesture of appreciation from the synagogue he was invited to become one of their Board members. The first Muslim appointed to the Board of a British synagogue made national news headlines.
Bradford pupils themselves have come forward to openly share what the Anne Frank programme has meant to them. One boy, who was seemingly full of external confidence, found the courage to admit he was the victim of bullying so his teaching support officers could help him do something about it. He has since been a much happier person. One Asian teenage boy told us that he had come across boys in his community who were tempted to go to Syria to fight for Islamic State and this was an insurance policy against growth of those ideas. Uzma Zahid was a pupil at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College in 2009 when she first became an Anne Frank peer educator and then an Ambassador. Her grandfather had come to Bradford as a teenager from Pakistan to work in a woollen mill. Their family followed varying degrees of Muslim practice, some being more secular than others, but even those who were more secular still lived in a segregated community.
Uzma had never heard of Anne Frank when she was asked to be a peer guide. Once she had read the diary, she felt she shared some of Anne’s sentiments but felt it hard to relate her own relatively easy life to a young girl who went through something so horrific and cruel. Uzma’s initial nervousness about becoming a guide was helped by being one of a large group who were being trained together. She had attended an entirely Asian primary school, although her interaction with children from different backgrounds increased when she went to a different high school. Being an Anne Frank peer educator sparked a desire to go to university and she chose Royal Holloway College in Surrey, over 200 miles away from Bradford. It was only when she went to university that she realized what real diversity was. Although she had lived in such a multicultural city, Uzma had not realized how segregated her life had been.
When she had first become an Anne Frank guide for the Trust she had not fully discussed her role with her family, not realizing she was starting a relationship that she would describe as a ‘lifelong one’.
I now feel this is a huge part of who I am so I have become more accustomed to telling people about this aspect of me. I have just been so lucky to be given so many opportunities: I have met Zlata Filipović, I have had the chance to be a witness to Holocaust testimonies, I have visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, I have mentored younger ambassadors, and many more things. All of these encounters have helped me become someone who I hope my family, my friends, and members of the Anne Frank Trust, can be proud of.
Uzma went on to take a Master’s Degree and her thesis explored the association of chemical imbalances in the brain with schizophrenia and memory impairment. Like so many of our Anne Frank Ambassadors, we are indeed proud of her.
Following the Anne Frank programme in a school, teachers have reported an increase in the number of students choosing to study History beyond 16 and as an A-level subject, as students’ eyes have been opened to the impact history has upon our own lives. Another unforeseen by product of creating peer educators is that students themselves have told us they feel a greater respect and empathy towards their teachers, as being educators themselves has given them an understanding of the challenges teachers face in communicating knowledge.
Mukith cites the incident of a boy he was training in a West London school. During the guide training session, the boy was very engaged and answered all Mukith’s questions, but Mukith felt it had been in a rather loud and overconfident way. At the end of the session, Mukith called him over and told him his knowledge was impressive but that he perhaps needed to curb his overenthusiasm. Mukith continued:
I asked him how he knew so much about the subject, to which he answered that he was very interested in it and had learnt a lot outside of school. After the boy had left the room his teacher came over to me and asked me how I thought the training had gone. I mentioned that this particular young boy was a little disruptive but I was certainly impressed with his knowledge, even though it mainly revolved around the Nazis and Hitler. The teacher explained to me that there were reports that the community group this young boy belonged to were glorifying Nazism. The school did not have firm evidence and were scared of losing the boy to these e
xtremist ideologies, so chose not to do anything radical, instead selecting him to be an Anne Frank peer educator.
Mukith continued:
Keeping my conversation with the teacher to myself, the next day I tracked down the student before his first guiding session and told him that I wanted to go over the slides with him before his session. After a brief conversation, I asked him how he knew so much about the Nazis and Hitler in particular. He was vague but mentioned that in his culture there was a belief in a caste system which mirrored the Nazis’ belief in a superior race. He explained that his community group did not have a violent approach but the similarities between the hierarchy of the Nazis’ race system and their own caste system made some in his community openly praise Hitler.
I sat with the boy and talked through some of the personal testimonies that I have been privileged to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivors and spoke extensively about the Nazi race laws and the meaning of racism. He slowly softened his stance and I asked him to research more about the Holocaust from reliable sources, giving him links to appropriate websites. The boy didn’t show up for two out of the three guiding sessions he was supposed to give but I did see him on the last day, when he agreed to guide a class.
Afterwards he explained to me that he hadn’t felt it was appropriate to guide classes around the exhibition while he held these beliefs but after researching more about the Holocaust, as I had suggested, he realized that what he had been taught in his community was not right – although he still believed a strong leader could be important. He admitted that pride in being part of a group should not mean treating others differently. I told him I was proud of him and really impressed by his bravery, not just for coming to guide the class around the exhibition but also for admitting something so personal, then challenging it and realizing it was wrong. I told him that if he could hold on to this bravery and continue being humble he would achieve some amazing things.
Uzma Zahid sums up why she feels the Anne Frank educational programme is so critical:
I think it’s very apparent why we should learn about historical events, especially atrocities. It’s also important to learn from personal accounts, to understand what an individual went through, to see events through the eyes of someone who lived through it really puts things into perspective. It is also necessary to draw comparisons between current and past atrocities, which can help put the events of today into perspective.
The Anne Frank Schools’ Peer Guiding and Ambassadors programme received a huge boost in 2012, when its expansion was supported by the Trust’s largest ever single grant, £836,000 from the UK’s ‘Big Lottery’ released over five years. The programme was called ‘Realizing Ambition’ and was carried out in particular areas of deprivation, helping to divert young people from pathways into crime so that they can fulfil their true potential. A new Programme Delivery Manager, Shona Gibbs, joined the Trust and managed the Education team in its delivery. The Trust’s work was scrupulously monitored and its impact assessed by independent agencies throughout the five years, and by the third year the Anne Frank Trust succeeded in receiving ‘Gold Quality’ standard. This led to further successful funding bids to other agencies. Shaun Whelan, a programme manager for ‘Realizing Ambition’, described why, ‘Your [Anne Frank Trust’s] commitment to the young people you work with has been amazing and your commitment to being challenged, to testing and improving the work you deliver, has been amazing too.’
The young people whose circumstances I have related reflect the impact on individuals of the peer education methodology. As well as the ‘Realizing Ambition’ continuous monitoring over five years, the Trust’s work in schools has been academically evaluated by the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Kent. 80 per cent of teachers interviewed said that Anne Frank peer guides were more likely to challenge discriminatory behaviour and 90 per cent of teachers reported that peer guides are more confident after having taken part in the programme. We know that our work has a long term impact on the lives of young people, leaving them with a greater empathy and respect for others and a reduced negativity towards different groups.
The numbers are hugely encouraging but even more so are these beautiful words from an Anne Frank Ambassador at Lawnswood School in Leeds:
Did you know that when the world was invented, racism came afterwards? Racism was invented by people, and today, we as people have the power to eliminate racism. The colour of your skin does not define you in any way possible. Your appearance is only a cover, a cover which starts the most magical story ever, which is your life. Don’t judge a book by its cover, because you don’t know what the story holds.
Chapter 23
Inspired by Holocaust Survivors
Even though they may display a veneer of normality, survivors of wars and persecution rarely completely leave behind their profoundly affecting experiences. They are buried deep inside their psyche and come out to taunt them at night, or as they get older and find themselves with increased leisure time on their hands. However, despite the deep and long-lasting wounds they carry, it is a telling lesson for us all how they have readjusted to living in a civil society and in many cases given so much back.
I have been privileged to have spent time with many Holocaust survivors, as well as those from the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides and other terrible wars. I have learned that those have been fortunate to survive carry with them a wide range of experiences and stories. I would like to be able to relate the story of every survivor I have met, but that would make this chapter overwhelming in its length and content. I will therefore stick to those that have, for differing reasons, had a profound effect on me, in the hope that their stories also affect others.
The first Holocaust survivor I ever met was a Hungarian man called David Gold. A new exhibition about the Swedish Holocaust hero and rescuer Raoul Wallenberg was touring Britain and I had been invited on to the organizing committee to bring it to my home town of Bournemouth. In the summer of 1982, the exhibition in Wallenberg’s honour was staged in a centrally-located Catholic church and we had invited a Hungarian Holocaust survivor called David Gold to come down from London to speak at the opening. This was the first full Holocaust testimony I heard first-hand, and like others when they first hear a Holocaust survivor describe their experiences, it remains with me to this day. The chairman of the local organizing committee was a charming and dapper émigré from Sweden called Mr Kay Mayer. Mr Mayer had a very special interest in keeping Raoul Wallenberg’s memory alive.
Wallenberg, who had studied architecture as a young man at the University of Michigan, found on his return to Stockholm that his American qualification did not carry weight when seeking a job in his chosen field. He was compelled to earn a living in business and one of his associates was Kay Mayer. As I recall their company traded in men’s neckties. In June 1944, after the German invasion of Hungary in March of that year, the international businessman Wallenberg had been recruited by the US War Refugee Board to go to Budapest on a clandestine mission for them.
Wallenberg was given the dangerous task of trying to assist and save Hungarian Jews. To help his cover he was given special diplomatic status by the Swedish legation. Together with the diplomat Per Anger, Wallenberg rented thirty-two safe houses that were designated neutral Swedish territory, and thus saved 10,000 people’s lives. Through his clandestine operations this heroic young man, who had been trained as an architect and not as a spy nor a soldier, succeeded in saving an astonishing number of Jews from certain deportation and death. In January 1945 at the end of the war, and in one of the most distressing cases of the unfathomable injustice of life, this man of valour who had risked his own discovery and execution by the Nazis, was in fact captured and abducted by the Soviets as a presumed spy. Raoul Wallenberg spent the rest of his life, we know not how long, suffering in the dreaded Soviet Lubyanka prison. In October 2016, seventy-one years after his disappearance, he was officially declared dead by the Swedish government. It is believed th
at he was murdered by the Soviets in prison in 1947.
Speaking in Bournemouth in 1982, in the peace of a church in a picturesque seaside resort, David Gold’s mind was reliving the German invasion of Hungary in 1944. The deportations of Hungarian Jews had come very late in the course of the Holocaust, during a period that had been short, piercing and deadly. In just six weeks during the summer of 1944, 400,000 Jews were deported to Poland. In Auschwitz-Birkenau the railway platform was lengthened to cope with the numbers of Hungarian arrivals, very few of whom avoided immediate gassing.
David Gold was not one of the deported. He and a group of men were taken down to the bank of the river Danube. There, in the centre of a European capital city, men, women and children were lined up facing the river and shot in the back one by one. As he saw the man next to him fall into the river and then heard the crack of the bullet destined for him, he somehow managed to time his own toppling into the river just before the deadly bullet hit his body. Following his split-second timing, his school swimming skills then came into play and he was able to play dead by remaining submerged for as long as possible. I can’t remember what happened subsequently in David Gold’s story but when I stood on the banks of the River Danube on a visit to Budapest in 2010 and walked amidst the poignant Holocaust memorial made up of hundreds of sculpted bronze shoes (they have been crafted in all shapes and sizes from toddler to adult), I thought again of David Gold and his speech to a shocked audience in a Bournemouth church in 1982.
The Legacy of Anne Frank Page 33
