- Person
- Anne Frank
- Lived
- 1929–1945
- Field
- Writing
- From
- Dutch-German
The story
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1929. Her family first lived in a house on Marbachweg and in 1931 moved to Ganghoferstraße, in a liberal neighbourhood known as the Poets' Quarter; both streets are now part of the Dornbusch district, and both houses still stand. In 1934 the family left for Amsterdam, among the 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.
After the war Anne's father, Otto, the only member of the family to survive the camps, wanted a place of learning in her name in the city of her birth. As early as 1950 he hoped to found an educational centre in Frankfurt, but it took more than forty years for the idea to become reality. A society to create it was formed in 1994, and on 15 June 1997 the Anne Frank Educational Centre, the Bildungsstätte Anne Frank, opened in a former youth hostel near Anne's old home.
The centre describes itself as a place where young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to the present. In 2003 it opened a multimedia exhibition, Anne Frank: A Girl from Germany, developed with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, which lets visitors follow individual stories through the wider history of Nazism. It also runs seminars, training courses and projects for schools and teachers.
Since 2010, under its director Meron Mendel, the centre has broadened its work. It added a multimedia learning laboratory for young people and two counselling services for victims of right-wing violence, and it now places human rights education and dialogue between people of different backgrounds, including families with a history of immigration, alongside the history of the Holocaust.
The centre is supported by the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, the charitable foundation Otto Frank set up in 1963, which represents the family and works to educate young people against racism. Together with the Anne Frank House, opened in 1960, the Berlin Zentrum and other organisations in her name, it forms part of an international network that carries Anne's story into classrooms.
Why it matters
The Frankfurt centre turns the city Anne's family was forced to flee into a place where young Germans learn to recognise antisemitism and racism and to stand up against them.
About Anne Frank
Diarist of the Holocaust; her diary has become one of literature's most-read accounts of conscience and hope.
More about Anne Frank
- Anne Frank rewrote her diary to publish it after the warAfter hearing a 1944 radio appeal to preserve wartime diaries, Anne Frank, aged 14, began rewriting her diary as a book, creating pseudonyms and shaping it for readers.
- Anne Frank's diary encouraged Nelson Mandela in prisonNelson Mandela said he read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it" in his struggle against apartheid.
- Anne Frank's hiding place became a museum in 1960The building where Anne Frank hid was saved from demolition by a foundation formed in 1957 and opened as the Anne Frank House museum on 3 May 1960.
- Saplings from Anne Frank's tree grow around the worldSaplings from the horse-chestnut tree Anne Frank watched from her hiding place have been planted at museums, schools and memorials, including Little Rock and a 9/11 memorial park.
Sources
- Anne Frank Wikipedia
- Anne Frank Educational Centre Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.