The Legacy of Anne Frank
Page 44
Tony felt there was a great future in education about Anne Frank but there was however a danger of complacency because the Holocaust is currently considered such a safe topic. After the non–existence of Holocaust education until the 1990s, and then its growth up to now, he felt that the third stage moving forward should be more reflection about what we can improve. Referring to his own area of expertise, that of Britain and the Holocaust, he noted that the Kindertransports (the children’s rescue transports of the late 1930s) were looked upon positively as Britain welcoming endangered children. ‘But in fact the parents should have been allowed to come too.’
He was optimistic that the work of the Anne Frank Trust would ensure that complacency doesn’t happen. Echoing Ronald Leopold’s insistence on imparting sound historical knowledge, Tony made clear his view that, ‘Connections should be made, and will be made, between then and now, but a good knowledge of what happened then and what is actually happening now can help avoid crass comparisons. For example, the homosexual community was persecuted but very few gay people were killed in the camps, rather they were arrested and held in police cells.’
Tony expressed another concern. ‘You know, I’m very aware of the dangers of Anne Frank falling into the wrong hands. Her story can so easily be made into schmaltz. But it is a story that is so powerful, especially as now we take the story right into Bergen-Belsen.’ And then this distinguished academic and renowned historian surprised me by letting his emotion guide his thoughts, ‘The seven seconds of moving footage of Anne Frank, used to such powerful effect in the final scene of Jon Blair’s film “Anne Frank Remembered”, still has an amazing power to get to me. Anne was a messy, incredibly bright person and seeing her alive brings home the loss, not just of her, but all the others.’
The Anne Frank House’s International Director Jan Erik Dubbelman, after over thirty years of travelling the world with the Anne Frank exhibitions, has a pragmatic view about Holocaust education, ‘Even the Holocaust with a big “H” doesn’t move the general public now like it did our generation.’ However, referring to the peer-to-peer educative approach he expanded, ‘But the idea to engage young people and give them responsibility for teaching others, be it in Sri Lanka, Brazil or Argentina, the same magic seems to apply. It is not an exclusively European or Christian concept. Young people learn when they explore, less so when they listen.’
The Anne Frank House and the Anne Frank Trust UK are now harnessing the power of social media to let young people spread Anne’s message themselves. ‘Switch Off Prejudice’ is a British government-funded innovative new programme that the Anne Frank Trust have designed for young people to help them understand the dangers of prejudice and discrimination that they can encounter in the digital world, where they are being increasingly exposed to hate speech. The programme examines prejudice and discrimination both from a historical perspective, and in the modern world, encouraging young people to question and challenge what they see online, and nurturing their development as responsible digital citizens.
The Trust’s teenage ‘Anne Frank Ambassadors’ who participate in the programme will learn how to make their own social media campaigns to share Anne’s powerful message, how to research information needed to support their campaigns, and how to use the different online social media platforms. They are being taught how to distinguish between fact and opinion in this challenging digital area, and how to become safer, more responsible, competent, confident and creative users of social media and other technologies.
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Personally, I have had a long-held dream to see a real thread joining up the legions of young people around the world who have been motivated into positive thoughts and actions by learning about Anne Frank. I have often referred to this idea by my own term of ‘Anne’s Army’ – creating the physical embodiment of the force for good that Otto Frank envisaged when he dedicated his life to his daughter’s diary. Along these lines, in 2017, the Anne Frank House started developing a project called the ‘Anne Frank Youth Network’. This will be an expanding global network of young people aged between 15 and 20 trained to challenge discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism through peer education and volunteering in their communities. The Anne Frank House will work with its locally-based partners in fifty different countries a year, encouraging and equipping around 6,000 young people to play an active role in shaping society. The young participants will have online access to specially created learning resources and social media contact with each other. The Anne Frank Youth Network aims to trigger a global movement of youth activists who will play an active role in creating positive change in their local communities. The Anne Frank Youth Network could maybe play their part in creating a world free from hatred, a world where all humans are treated with dignity and where people aren’t indifferent to the suffering of others. In return, members of the Anne Frank Youth Network will feel valued, motivated and empowered.
As I write, there are plans to take the Anne Frank exhibition and accompanying education programmes to South Korea, Taiwan, and Myanmar. The pilot projects held in Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are being expanded. Thailand and the Philippines have expressed interest in showing the exhibition. In the continent of Africa, the South African tour continues and there have been expressions of interest in the exhibition from Tanzania and Rwanda, and in the ‘Free To Choose’ human rights workshops from Morocco and even Egypt. In Brazil, as well as the community programmes in São Paulo, a chain of Brazilian supermarkets is considering bringing the Anne Frank exhibition to all of its ninety-one shopping malls in the country. The extensive education programmes in Argentina and Uruguay, and the exhibition tours in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela may be extended into Paraguay. In the Caribbean, programmes are scheduled for the islands of the Dutch Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago and Surinam, and across the Pacific in Polynesia, Hawaii hosted its first-ever Anne Frank exhibition in December 2017.
On 15 July 1944, Anne wrote about how hard it was to hold on to her ideals when she could feel the suffering of millions and see the ‘approaching thunder that one day will destroy us too’. And then she remembers the comfort she got from looking up at the sky (something we take for granted, but she could only do on the rare occasions she climbed the steep ladder steps to the attic above the hiding place). She finishes her entry by writing, ‘And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them!’
That day never came. But through her father’s mission, through determined educators, through community activists and thousands upon thousands of young people around the world, Anne Frank’s ideals are being realized.
References
Author’s note
Most of the content of this book has been my own recollections and interviews - many of them thanks to Skype - with colleagues who are credited within the pages. Historical dates and facts were cross checked using several online references in each case. Hence this list of references may appear somewhat short as I have only listed books and media that I have taken direct quotes from. Books and media referenced, but not quoted from, have been listed in the Index.
Chapter 5: ‘Eva’s Story’ Eva Schloss, W H Allen, 1988
‘The Promise’ Eva Schloss, Puffin Books, 2004
‘After Auschwitz’ Eva Schloss and Karen Bartlett, 2013
Chapter 7: ‘Reflections in Rhyme’ Bertha Klug 1972, self-published
Chapter 8: Robert Cox, former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald writing in The Guardian, 1999
Chapter 9: ‘Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit’ Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Atria Books, 2003
Chapter 10: ‘Voices from the Past’ Herbert Levy, Book Guild Publishing, 1995
Chapter 11: ‘Zlata Filipovic, whose journal was Sarajevo’s answer to Anne Frank’s diary, tells of her fears for Bosnia today’ Ha
rriet Alexander, Daily Telegraph, 2012
Chapter 13: ‘We Are Stones: Anne Frank, The Diary and The Play’ Len Rudner Published on Linked In 2015
‘Anne Frank, The Biography’ Melissa Müller, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999
Chapter 14: ‘Speaking with conviction, how an 85-year-old survivor reduced high-security prisoners to tears’ Rosa Doherty, Jewish Chronicle, 2014
‘Shut in: relating to Anne Frank’ Jackie Cosh Times Educational Supplement, 2012
Chapter 17: ‘Anne Frank, The Biography’ Melissa Müller, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999
‘Treasures from the Attic, The Extraordinary Story of Anne Frank’s Family’ Mirjam Pressler with Gertrude Elias, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011
Chapter 19: ‘The Anne Frank Declaration’, Barry van Driel for the Anne Frank Educational Trust, 1998
Chapter 21: ‘The Hidden Life of Otto Frank’ Carol Ann Lee, Viking, 2002
Chapter 25: ‘Anne Frank in the Land of Manga’ Alain Lewkowicz, iPad application and book Arte Editions, 2013
‘Diary of a Vietcong doctor: The Anne Frank of Vietnam’ David McNeill, The Independent, 2005
‘Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram’ first published in Vietnam, 2005. Paperback edition, Penguin Random House, 2008
Chapter 26: ‘Why it’s kosher to joke about Anne Frank’ Ricky Gervais, Jewish Chronicle, 2012
‘The Ghost Writer’ Philip Roth, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979
‘The Lesson of the Master’ Robert Towers, New York Times Book Review, 1979
‘Hope, A Tragedy’ Shalom Auslander, Penguin, 2012
‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank’ Nathan Englander, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012
Dr Shirli Gilbert, Essay for the Oxford Journal, 2013
‘The Fate of the Idea of Toleration’ Professor Simon Schama, Inaugural Anne Frank Lecture, Anne Frank Trust UK with the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, sponsored by the Nirman Foundation, 2011
Chapter 29: ‘Fear’ a story from ‘Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annexe’ Halban Publishers, 2010
Exhibitions and Educational Resources referenced in this book:
‘Anne Frank in the World 1929 – 1945’, a travelling photographic exhibition that toured from 1985 – 1996. © Anne Frank House
‘Anne Frank, A History for Today’, a travelling photographic exhibition launched in 1997 and which is still touring internationally in various formats © Anne Frank House
‘Anne Frank + You’, a travelling photographic exhibition launched in 2005 and which is still touring. UK only. © Anne Frank House and Anne Frank Trust UK
‘Let Me Be Myself’ a travelling photographic exhibition launched in 2015 designed for peer education use. © Anne Frank House
‘Switch Off Prejudice’ workshops which aim to give students an in-depth insight into the dangers of prejudice and discrimination, looking at examples from the real world and online. UK only © Anne Frank Trust UK
International Anne Frank organizations:
Anne Frank House www.annefrank.org
Anne Frank-Fonds www.annefrank.ch
Anne Frank Trust UK www.annefrank.org.uk
Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, USA www.annefrank.com
Anne Frank Zentrum Germany www.annefrank.de
Centro Ana Frank Argentina www.centroanafrank.com.ar
International linked organizations:
South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation www.ctholocaust.co.za
Instituto Plataforma Brasil www.ipbrasil.org
Seagull Foundation for the Arts, India www.seagullindia.com
Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center (English site) http://en.holocf.ru
Gedenkdienst, Austrian volunteer organization www.gedenkdienst.at
Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, German volunteer organization www.actionreconciliation.org
Fig 2. Happy and normal family life. Edith Frank takes seven-year-old Margot and three-year-old Anne on a trip to Frankfurt city centre in March 1933. Hitler has been in power for two months, and life for Germany’s Jews is about to change. Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images.
Fig 3. In May 1941, the photographer Frans Dupont took a series of exquisitely posed studio images of eleven-year-old Anne. Photo by Frans Dupont/ Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images.
Fig 4. (a) The front cover and (b) inside of Anne’s original diary with photos she pasted inside it. From the Anne Frank House collection.
Fig 5. The first Anne Frank traveling exhibition Anne Frank in the World 1929-1945 was monochrome and huge in scale. Here it is on show in Glasgow in 1990. From the Anne Frank House collection.
Fig 6. Otto Frank and his wife Fritzi visiting Audrey Hepburn at her home in Switzerland, circa 1957. A copy of this photo was given to me in Los Angeles by Audrey’s son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer. It was taken by his late father, the actor Mel Ferrer.
Fig 7. Anne Frank’s cousin Bernd ‘Buddy’ Elias reads the Anne Frank Declaration to United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan at UN headquarters in New York in January 1999. Those watching include (from left) footballer and UN Ambassador John Fashanu; my late husband Tony Bogush; the UK’s Ambassador to the UN Sir Jeremy Greenstock; Eva Schloss; myself and at back right, Barry van Driel, who composed the Declaration. Photo: UN photographer, from the Anne Frank Trust collection.
Fig 8. A very special memory of attending the 1996 Academy Awards in Hollywood with Miep Gies. Jon Blair, the writer and director of the Oscar winning documentary feature Anne Frank Remembered is at the back on the right. Photo: Jerome Goldblatt.
Fig 9. Anne Frank House International Director Jan Erik Dubbelman greets Japanese children coming to the exhibition in Tokyo in 2010 Photo: Aaron Peterer, Anne Frank House collection.
Fig 10. Latvian and Russian teenagers performing together in The Dreams of Anne Frank Riga, 1998. For some it was their first opportunity to interact socially. From the Anne Frank House collection.
Fig 11. Student peer guides in the South African township of Orlando West with Aaron Peterer of the Anne Frank House education team (centre right back). Photo: Gift Mabunda, 2009 from the Anne Frank House collection.
Fig 12. Eva Schloss with a prisoner guide (face obscured) at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. On the right is Steve Gadd, the Anne Frank Trust prison tour manager. Photo: Mark McEvoy for the Anne Frank Trust.
Fig 13. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen (with red tie) is shown around the Anne Frank, A History for Today exhibition at the CEU Paraisopolis School in Sao Paulo, 2010. His enthusiastic and knowledgeable guides are as young as ten and eleven. Photo: Riccardo Sanchez for the Instituto Plataforma Brasil.
Fig 14. Anne Frank Ambassadors show schools and members of the public around the Anne Frank + You exhibition at Bradford College in West Yorkshire in 2013. With thanks to Bradford Metropolitan District Council and the Anne Frank Trust.
Fig 15. Anne Frank peer guides at the Forest Gate School in London. From the Anne Frank Trust collection.
Fig 16. After the thirty-year-long Sri Lankan civil war, the Anne Frank, A History for Today exhibition gave students in Jaffna an opportunity to reflect on their recent past and future. From the Anne Frank House collection.