Travelling exhibition: “Anne Frank - a History for Today”

Project Outline

The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania and the Anne Frank House had decided to jointly organise a project entitled „Anne Frank – a History for Today“ in Lithuania in 1998. The main goal of this project was to take the first steps towards dealing with the recent past in Lithuania. This included providing information to the general public, offering educational resources, and organising further activities such as cultural events and exhibitions that also serve to educate. In addition to dealing with the past, these efforts were aimed at encouraging an active participation on the part of the general public in efforts to construct a pluralistic society based on the principles of equal rights and mutual respect.

Anne Frank – a short biography

Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt (Germany) as the youngest child of the German Jewish couple Otto and Edith Frank. Her sister Margot was three years older. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 the family left to Holland and settled down in Amsterdam, where Anne grew up safely. In 1940 Holland was occupied by the Nazis and Jews in Holland were persecuted like the Jews in Germany and in all the other occupied territories. In total at least 6 Million Jews were murdered until 1945. Otto Frank decided to hide with his family and the friend-family Van Daan in a small narrow annex to his office-building in the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. For 25 months (from 7.7.1942 to 4.8.1944) the two families and the eighth hider, the dentist Mr. Dussel, lived cut off from the world, only supported by the four employees of Otta Franks office. These four helpers risked their life daily by bringing them food, schoolbooks for the children and information’s from the world outside. Anne Frank wrote a diary about her life in hiding. She even gave it a name: Kitty! On the 4th of August 1944 the eight hiders were betrayed. Until today it’s unknown by whom. The Franks, The Van Daans, and Mr. Dussel were deported to Auschwitz. Only Otto Frank survived. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. Her diary was found by Miep Gies, one of the helpers and this diary became world-famous.

The travelling exhibition

The travelling exhibition „Anne Frank - a History for Today“ was opened by the parliament president Mr. Vytautas Landsbergis in the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) on September 23, 1999, the Memorial day of the Shoah in Lithuania. It awaited very many visitors, among them nearly all Lithuanian parliament members, the Dutch ambassador, the German deputy ambassador, the head of the Jewish community Mr. Simon Alperavicius, and many more, and it was a great success.

After one week in the Lithuanian Parliament the exhibition was transferred to the Old Town Hall (Rotuše) where it was opened to the public with an immense cultural program. Speeches were given among others by the German Ambassador Mr. Detlof von Berg, the Austrian Ambassador Mr. Florian Haugg, the Lithuanian deputy Minister for Cultural Affairs, and the Anne Frank expert Mrs. Mirijam Pressler. The cultural program consisted of a trio and later a sextet under the lead of Mr. Leonid Melnik. The musicians came from the music academy of Vilnius and the Lithuanian national orchestra and were playing “Jerusalem de Lite” (Jerusalem of Lithuania, the former honorary title for the city of Vilnius), a mixture of classical and Eastern European Jewish music, which inspired the audience. It finally reached a peak with the klezmer group Gojim, a very well known and famous Yiddish music group of Vienna. Very moving scenes happened when they ended their performance with the hymn of the resistance fighters of the Vilna Ghetto “sog nit keinmol”. Everyone stood up: Holocaust survivors, the youth, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians; altogether they sang this famous song, many of them with tears in their eyes.

The exhibition travelled afterwards to some other seven towns all around Lithuania (Panevezys, Utena, Kedainiai, Klaipeda, Siauliai, Mazeikiai, and Kaunas). At the openings always some 50-80 people were present, as well as representatives of the cities and several local journalists and local TV-teams were as well represented.

In addition to the exhibition two guide trainings took place in Vilnius. It was estimated hundreds of schools would participate and hence thousands of school students will visit the exhibition. Consequently, to maximise the educational value of such a visit, local school students were trained to accompany their classmates and visiting groups.

Résumé

More than 15,000 visitors came all in all to see the exhibition at eleven presentations in eight Lithuanian towns: around 70% of the visitors were students. Our feedback results showed that most Lithuanian pupils entered the exhibition with no knowledge at all about Jewish history or the Holocaust. Some of them have never heard of that term before. They therefore learned a lot about the story of Anne Frank. The active commitment of the exhibition guides, who were trained by members of our staff, was crucial in this process; they engaged the visitors in debates about the themes of the exhibition.

Drama Theatre “Dreams of Anne Frank”

One big part of the project were the drama workshops which were organized in September 1999 and February 2000. The focus of the workshops was to bring together young people from different backgrounds and to rehearse the play "Dreams of Anne Frank" by Bernard Kops. The British play writer wrote this drama theatre in 1992 for the 50th anniversary of Anne Frank’s hiding. Therefore twelve teenagers aged between 14 - 15 (the age of Anne Frank when she wrote her diary), both from the Lithuanian School No.9 and the Shalom Aleichem Jewish School, were cast. After one month of intensive rehearsals, the play was performed at the Vilnius Puppet Theatre, the former Ghetto theatre, for an audience of 350 people. This was quite symbolic and a great success. In September 2000 the third part of the Drama project took place to prepare the twelve teens of presenting a theatre-in-education workshop to schools in some of the towns the exhibition has visited. Next to their travelling to schools around Lithuania they produced a film and a manual for teachers to implement drama theatre in schools.