Forty years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps where among the millions killed in the Holocaust was a young 16 year old whose diary would later become world renowned, the life of Anne Frank will be recreated as the focal point of an exhibit to open in New York, and simultaneously in Amsterdam and Frankfurt, on June 12.
The exhibit, “Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945, “will attempt to provide through some 800 photographs, some previously unpublished, and other archival documents, a personal history of the young Dutch girl’s brief life. It will also seek to present an historical portrait of events leading to the Nazis rise to power and life in Germany and occupied Holland.
Many of the new photographs have been secured from Dutch and German archives through the efforts of the Anne Frank Center in Amsterdam, sponsors of the exhibition, and from private collections, in order to provide a glimpse into the life of the Frank family before and during their hiding from the Nazis in a small, secret annex in Amsterdam.
The annex was discovered after about two years by the Nazis in August, 1944. All the inhabitants, Anne and her family, as well as four friends, and two of the four non-Jewish helpers were brought to the Nazi death camps. Of the inhabitants of the annex, only Anne’s father Otto Frank, survived. He died in 1980 in Switzerland.
Max van der Stoel, The Netherland’s Ambassador to the United Nations, told a breakfast meeting with reporters this week that Holland has traditionally supported the efforts of the Anne Frank Center and its goals to educate and fight against racial hatred and religious intolerance.
The exhibit, to be viewed in New York at the Union Theological Seminary through the summer, is being hosted here by the American Forum on Religion and Politics, with the cooperation of the American Friends of the Anne Frank Center in New York. A tour of the exhibit through at least six major cities is expected over the next two years.
AIMED AT ALERTING AMERICANS TO DANGERS
Thomas Osborne, president and co-founder of the American Forum, told the breakfast that he views the exhibit as a means of alerting the American public to the dangers presented by religious and political discrimination and the continued need for “religious institutions to be vigilant” against threats of divisiveness due to religion.
“By way of this exhibit,” Osborne said, “we wish to teach that the legacy of religious institutions in the U.S. is one which emphasizes inclusiveness and work for the common good of a pluralistic society of many faiths; to direct this concern to all the American people, and in particular to the leaders of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths, that the mix of religion and politics in the United States, based upon a tradition and respect of religious and cultural pluralism be reaffirmed.”
The exhibit will contain along with the 800 photographs which will be silk screened on transparent panels and mounted in specifically designed and constructed modular units, several audio visual units and a model of the secret annex where Frank and her family hid.
Moreover, the exhibition, according to Bauce van der Wal, president of the Arne Frank Center in Amsterdam, will seek to present an understanding of how Nazism began and where Nazism drew its massive and enthusiastic support. “If we are serious about never letting it happen again, there would be a need to understand how it happened,” van der Wal declared.
The exhibit will be divided into four parts: Frankfurt, where Frank was born, during the twenties; the rise to power of National-Socialism and the parallel rise to power of Hitler; international reaction to the Nazi regime and events in occupied Holland; and the aftermath of the war including today’s re-emergence of neo-Nazism and Holocaust revisionism.
In Washington, Sen. Carl Levin (D. Mich.) and his brother Rep. Sander Levin (D. Mich.) are moving to designate June 12–the 56th anniversary of Ann Frank’s birth — as “Anne Frank Day.” As of today, 27 Senators have added their names to the resolution. In the House, Reps. Thomas Daschie (D. S.D.) and Frank Horton (R. NY) have joined Levin in gathering 140 signatures in support of a similar resolution.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
