The Legacy of Anne Frank

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

  Comments found in the exhibition’s visitors’ book included, ‘I could identify myself and my people (Tamil) with the feelings of Anne Frank. We are also living with the same dreams, that the suffering of our people will pass away very soon.’ Another visitor gave an indication of the Anne Frank exhibition’s unique role in post-conflict regions by writing, ‘Thanks for giving me this opportunity before I leave this world. It will be appreciated if this is provided to all who have undergone disasters in the past.’

  Bangladesh

  ‘When the civilization of mankind cries, a few brave people come to help. I feel Anne Frank was that inspiration.’ Visitor to ‘A History for Today’ in Dhaka

  The recent history of Bangladesh, where the Anne Frank exhibition found itself in February 2015, is complicated and tragic. It is closely connected to the recent history of India, Pakistan and the UK – and even that of the Anne Frank Trust. So I will take a little extra time to explain the country’s violent birth and upheavals.

  After India was granted independence from British colonial rule in 1947, the All-India Muslim League arose demanding a separate State for India’s Muslims, who were the majority in the north-western state of Punjab. Following the retributive genocide between the two religions, the former British Indian Empire was partitioned into two nations, the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, the latter created as a separate homeland for Muslims. An estimated eleven million people eventually migrated between the Hindu and Muslim areas, with an estimated one million people killed in the inter-communal violence.

  But there was a major challenge to be overcome in the new Pakistani nation, which was divided into two areas – East and West Pakistan. Normally one would expect East and West to be two adjacent zones of the same region of land but in the case of Pakistan, they were separated by nearly 1,000 miles of territory across northern India. From its outset, Pakistan was an unrealistic, and ultimately a dysfunctional, nation. Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan, although smaller in population than East Pakistan, had the larger share of the country’s revenue allocation which led to greater industrial and civil development and control of the military.

  In East Pakistan the traditional language was Bengali, but the Pakistani ruling elite subjugated the Bengalis politically, culturally and economically, even insisting on Urdu being the language spoken throughout the country. In Pakistan’s national Parliamentary elections held in 1970, the Bengali nationalists, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory and his party, the Awami League, became the majority party of Pakistan as a whole. Thus, they should have been expected to form the new government. Rahman’s victory was ignored by the defeated government and talks proved unsuccessful.

  In early March 1971, Sheikh Rahman made a speech referring to ‘our struggle is for freedom and independence’. This was seen as inflammatory; he was arrested but managed to pass on a hand-written note on which was written the ‘Bangladesh Declaration of Independence’. Nine months of civil war followed in East Pakistan, in which an estimated three million people were killed and over 270,000 women raped. Killing fields were to be found in every town and village, and in the final days of the liberation war, local fundamentalist collaborators of the Pakistan Army abducted leading intellectuals – including writers, journalists, doctors, lawyers and engineers – blindfolded them, killed them and dumped them on the outskirts of the capital city of Dhaka. Afterwards the war was officially declared a genocide.

  Finally, on 16 December 1971, 90,000 soldiers of the Pakistan Army surrendered, which was the largest capitulation since the Second World War. Independent Bangladesh was born amid high hopes of a new democratic and secular state. Sadly, a proper democracy was not to be restored until twenty years later, after successive periods of martial law where dissenters were jailed and executed. In 1981, the country’s own president Ziaur Rahman was assassinated by a group of army officers. The population also suffered extreme poverty throughout these upheavals and natural disasters such as flood and famine.

  For my generation the Bangladesh Liberation War is seared into our consciousness. This is partly due to the two ‘Concerts for Bangladesh’ held on the day and evening of 1 August 1971. They were the idea of former Beatle George Harrison and his close friend the renowned sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who had been born in Bengal. These were the first-ever concerts of such magnitude and included names such as Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. The concerts, and then the following documentary feature and record, raised funds not only for the survivors of the genocide still taking place, but the victims of a devastating cyclone.

  The impact of the Bangladesh liberation war is still felt in the UK through the immigration it triggered to London and to the northern and Midlands industrial cities of Britain. Significant numbers of ethnic Bengali people had actually come to Britain as early as the seventeenth century, mostly as seamen working on ships for the British East India Company and who settled in convenient port towns. One of the most famous early Bengali Muslim immigrants to Britain was a man called Sake Dean Mohamed, who had worked for the British East India Company. In 1810, he founded London’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House near Portman Square in the West End, and he is also reputed as having introduced shampoo (from the Hindi word champo) and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom.

  Numbers also came in the 1950s and 1960s, and by 1970 Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets, and many nearby streets, had become predominantly Bengali. The former Jewish bakeries opened during the previous wave of immigration into the East End were turned into curry houses, the jewellery shops were turned into sari stores, and the synagogues into dress factories.

  Following the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, and the subsequent turbulence and poverty, an even larger immigration to Britain took place. Throughout the 1970s, these new immigrants were to experience institutionalized racism and racist attacks by organized far-right groups such as the National Front and British National Party. A park in Whitechapel Road in London’s East End is named after Altab Ali, a young Bangladeshi immigrant murdered on his way home from work in 1978 by three racially-motivated teenagers.

  The decline in manufacturing businesses, especially in garment manufacturing which was a victim of the flourishing of the Far East, led to difficulties in finding employment among Bangladeshi workers. Instead they became cooks, waiters, taxi drivers and mechanics, often opening their own restaurants, but their progress up the social and economic ladder was a slow one for a long time.

  This large-scale Bangladeshi immigration has left its mark on the Anne Frank Trust. Many of the young people we work with in East London schools and in the Midlands and north of England are the children of those very immigrants – and indeed the Trust’s London Schools Project Manager Mukith Khalisadar is the son of Bangladeshi immigrants. It may take another generation for a fully successful integration as much of the Bangladeshi population still lives in insular communities, but the Anne Frank project in cities such as Bradford is helping to open second- and third-generation Bangladeshis’ eyes to a wider world of opportunities.

  In October 2014, the Bangladeshi Ambassador to the Netherlands, Sheikh Mohammed Belal, and the Minister for Cultural Affairs, Asaduzzaman Noor, visited the Anne Frank House. Like the Sri Lankan Ambassador, and many dignitaries who are shown around Anne’s hiding place, given special access to non-public areas and explained the educational philosophy of Otto Frank’s vision, they left the Prinsengracht and returned to The Hague with their minds racing. They soon contacted the Anne Frank House with an offer of support to bring the Anne Frank exhibition to Dhaka.

  The time frame they suggested was challenging as they were keen to have the exhibition launched as near as possible to the following 21 February, which is known as Mother Language Day. The commemoration honours a group of Bengali students killed on that very day in 1952 for campaigning for the freedom to use their mother language, Bengali, in post-partition East Pakistan. February also sees the month-long Amar Ekushey Book Fair in
Dhaka, and this would acknowledge the great literary inheritance of Anne Frank’s diary. The Minister of Cultural Affairs suggested the most suitable venue would be the National Museum in Dhaka, as he was its Chairman. Priya Machado and Loes Singels of the Anne Frank House, and their Indian tour partner, Megha Malhotra of PeaceWorks in Kolkata, were introduced to Ziauddin Tariq Ali of the Liberation War Museum and Tariq became their much-valued Dhaka-based partner in the urgently-needed planning and preparation.

  The ‘Anne Frank, A History for Today’ exhibition was opened at the National Museum in February 2015 and shown for one week. It was the same English language copy of ‘A History for Today’ which had been touring India and was flown 300 miles across the India/Bangladesh border into Dhaka. A summary of the text in Bengali language was displayed alongside each panel, nonetheless there were requests for a full Bengali copy of the exhibition to be made and taken further afield – which is an understandable request for an exhibition that was launched to help mark Mother Language Day.

  Some of the visitors’ comments reflected a real interest in the Holocaust, but also connections were made to Bangladesh’s difficult birth.

  I feel I’m a citizen of this global world. I feel human beings cannot be identified by their religion and race. It should be by their duty and deeds.

  I knew about Anne Frank but today I saw her for the first time. The exhibition is marvellous. I love it – and want it again.

  Anne Frank, I first read her when I was aged 15 and she made me feel how hard this world can be for a person who is born into a minority community. I felt a connection with her and that has been strengthened by this show.

  It was agreed by the Dhaka organizers that, despite the fact that the exhibition was on show for only one week, the personal story of Anne Frank was an excellent way to explain the history of the Holocaust to young people who had not encountered it before, as well as issues that are relevant today, such as the importance of democracy, pluralism and human rights. Both the organizers and general public felt that the Anne Frank story had a place in explaining their own genocide of 1971.

  In July 2016 Priya and Loes were due to fly to Dhaka to start plans for a return visit of the exhibition. But their plans were curtailed by a terrorist bombing of a café which killed twenty-eight people. This atrocity was not perpetrated by IS or al-Qaeda but by local militants. The democratic and secular state of Bangladesh, as envisioned in its founding declaration, continues to be riven by bloodshed. It is hoped for a return of the Anne Frank exhibition to tour beyond the city of Dhaka. It will still have some important work to do.

  Malala Yousafzai – the Anne Frank of Pakistan

  ‘One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world’. (Malala Yousafzai)

  Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old daughter of a teacher, was living a normal life in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, when she was asked to write a blog for the BBC about girls being banned from school by the Taliban. Due to her international prominence as a critic of the ban on girls’ education, she was targeted by the Taliban and shot in the neck by a masked gunman while travelling home on her school bus.

  In January 2014 the Anne Frank Trust announced that our annual Anne Frank Award for Moral Courage would be given to Malala. We had recently created an entire panel about her heroic story at the ‘Anne Frank + You’ exhibition, which was attracting lots of attention. Malala’s award would be presented at our next forthcoming fundraising lunch at London’s Park Lane Hilton hotel.

  Malala was about to sit for her school examinations so could not take valuable time out to come to London. This we understood – it would have been ironic for the world’s most prominent campaigner for girls’ education to miss out on her studies with crucial exams pending. Instead, her father Ziauddin Yousafzai came to accept the award on her behalf.

  Following the citation read out by the actress Naomie Harris, Ziauddin Yousafzai strode purposefully to the stage amidst the applause ringing round the huge ballroom. When the award was handed to him, he clutched it tightly to his chest with one hand and with the other hand opened his handwritten notes. He then made a heartfelt appeal for understanding of the terror of life under the Taliban and how we in the West should do all we can to help those who were being so oppressed. His speech was a lot longer than we had anticipated, but as it drew to a close what he told the 600-strong audience elicited audible gasps from all around the vast Hilton ballroom.

  ‘My daughter knew of Anne Frank in the Swat Valley,’ he said. Prior to the shooting of Malala and their arrival in the UK, the Yousafzai family had lived in the commercial city of Mingora, in the Swat Valley area of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhura province of north-west Pakistan. Anne Frank, in the far and remote Swat Valley of north-west Pakistan? Mingora had been under the control of the Taliban, but Ziauddin, who ran the local school, continued to advocate for the education of girls including his daughter and her friends. He had after all named his own daughter after a nineteenth-century local Pashtun heroine, Malalai of Maiwand, who had lost her life at age 18 fighting against the British colonists.

  Malala Yousafzai had come to the attention of Abdul Hai Kakkar, the local BBC Urdu-language correspondent, who approached her to write a blog about life under the Taliban. She later told the Guardian newspaper, ‘He told me about Anne Frank, a 13-year-old Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis. It was very sad, as in the end, the family were betrayed.’ Malala, at one time referred to in the media as the ‘Anne Frank of Pakistan’, has since cited Anne Frank’s diary as the most inspiring book she has read, having been photographed proudly displaying her own copy to the world.

  And in turn throughout the Indian subcontinent young people interacting with the Anne Frank educational programmes have been using Malala Yousafzai as their own inspiration. An ordinary but bright school girl from the Swat Valley who went on to become one of the world’s most eloquent and fearless campaigners for education and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Chapter 28

  The Strange Circle of the House on Blaricummerweg

  Life can sometimes throw up some very curious coincidences and unforeseen connections, the symbolism and outcome of which may not be realized for many years. The astonishing story of the house at 140 Blaricummerweg in Amsterdam links New York, Los Angeles and Amsterdam and spans over seventy years of secrets and deliberately, or accidentally, forgotten memories. It brings the consequences of a single act of proud defiance by a strong-willed young woman called Betty Polak into the present day, and tells us how, if not for this same young woman, the publication of Anne Frank’s diary might never have happened.

  In 2017 Jan Erik Dubbelman, the international director of the Anne Frank House, shared with me an incredible series of situations and coincidences that had connected his own birth in 1955, to Betty Polak’s life and to Jan and Annie Romein, the couple who had been instrumental in helping Otto Frank to get Anne Frank’s diary published. Jan Erik had first been introduced to Betty at her brother Jack and his wife’s sixtieth wedding anniversary party in New York in 2006. With Jan Erik’s insatiable interest in people’s lives, Betty and he naturally started to chat about her wartime experiences in the Netherlands. She told him that she and her first husband Phillip Leeuw had both been active in the Dutch Resistance and that Phillip had been executed by the Nazis. Distraught and now fearing for her own life, Betty had been taken in as a domestic servant by a wealthy Amsterdam family; a way of Christian families acquiring additional domestic help and a sanctuary for a Jewish girl from almost certain death if she were deported.

  During Betty’s time working for this family, an expensive crystal glass happened to have been accidentally broken by the family’s young son, and fearing punishment by their parents, he and his brother had both blamed their maid, Betty. On being confronted about something she hadn’t done, Betty’s youthful pride and indignation got the better of her. She immediately gave her notice to the family, packed her minimal belongings and ran out into the dark street. Not a wise t
hing to do for a Jewish girl seeking a safe haven from the threat of murder by the Nazis, but fortunately she found herself in a prosperous area of the city, populated by a liberal left-wing network of artists and intellectuals. To avoid being seen, she turned a corner into a quiet residential street and knocked on the door of number 140 of the street called Blaricummerweg.

  It was opened by Jan Romein. Later on, Jan Romein and his author and historian wife Annie would come to play a crucial role in the publication of Anne’s diary. Romein was shocked to see a trembling young girl on his doorstep clutching a brown leather suitcase. Instinctively he was going to shut the door in her face as there were so many desperate people begging for food and money during the war. But on that night in 1943, Jan Romein made a prompt and difficult decision, despite being aware that he could be jeopardizing his own life. Looking at this fragile, terrified girl, he realized this was not a beggar, but a Jewish girl who was running away from the Nazis. Jan beckoned the girl to come in, closed the front door and took Betty inside to meet his wife Annie. Betty remained living with the Romeins, feeling relatively safe again.

  After the war, Jan Romein was the historian and literary critic who wrote an article for the Dutch newspaper Het Parool, insisting that Anne’s diary be published and read by many. The article, which appeared on 3 April 1946, was entitled ‘Kinderstem’ (‘The Voice of a Child’) and focused on the pubescent innocence of the girl who was killed, while presenting the diary as a didactic tool to keep alive her memory. It was an anti-fascist call by the liberal-minded Romein to remind us to be vigilant against the enemies of humanity. Romein’s article led to the diary being taken on and published in book form on 25 June 1947 by Contact, a small Catholic publishing house.