An exhibit on Anne Frank at Chestnut Tree Books helps students to remember.
By: Josh Appelbaum
Sixty years on, the musings of an extraordinary 13-year-old schoolgirl are once again introducing the lessons of the Holocaust to public school students in New Jersey.
Among shelves lined with graphic novels, cook books and travel guides on the lower level of Chestnut Tree Books in Princeton are fabric panels illustrating the life of Anne Frank. Though the events in her diary are confined to the attic where she and her family were hidden, the exhibit A History for Today places her life and experiences within the historical context of Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, World War II and the Final Solution.
The exhibit is part of a program developed by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education to teach all public school students about prejudice and genocide. The Anne Frank exhibit is supplemented by talks given by Holocaust survivors as well as an installation on the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which has displaced 1.8 million people in the region and resulted in approximately 50,000 deaths.
Commission Executive Director Paul Winkler, who has championed Holocaust education in New Jersey schools since 1982, says, "Our belief is that children learn with their heads by getting facts and information, and with their hearts by caring and feeling." But it simply isn’t enough to engage students emotionally and intellectually, he adds.
To that end, the commission has developed curricula for educators to bring issues like Darfur into the classroom alongside lessons about past genocides, with the hope that such lessons will spur activism among students. "It is not good enough to know something they need to take a stand," Mr. Winkler says.
Nearly 1,200 students are scheduled to view the exhibit, which is on view through June 3. One recent Friday, fifth-grade students from Monmouth Junction Elementary School in South Brunswick visited Chestnut Tree Books for a guided tour of the exhibit with volunteer docent Marvin Goldstein. He pointed to a photograph of a Nazi-era classroom showing a student with a Star of David on his sleeve, his head turned down toward the floor, and a set of Aryan students motioning toward him. "Are there groups in school you want to belong to?" Mr. Goldstein asks. "In school, (German) students learned about ‘inferior races,’ and in their classes… Aryan children were told that this (Jewish) boy was inferior."
The exhibit also tells the stories of survivors, of resisters such as Miep Gies, who helped hide the Frank family and other groups (such as African immigrants) who were targeted by the Nazi regime. Students also view a 30 minute film on the life of Anne Frank and her significance in the post-World War II world.
Vera Goodkin, a Czech Jew who as a small child was rescued from a holding prison in Hungary by Raoul Wallenberg and was sent to live in an orphanage, has enlisted upward of 20 survivors to speak with the school groups at Chestnut Tree.
A professor emerita of English and French at Mercer County Community College, Ms. Goodkin was reunited with her parents in Sweden shortly after the war and moved back to Czechoslovakia, only to flee shortly thereafter when the nation became a USSR satellite. "My father watched as our democracy turned communist," she says. "We had already been (persecuted) by one totalitarian regime, so we came to the United States."
Charles Rojer, a retired physician who, as a child, was saved thanks to efforts of members of the Belgian underground resistance movement, also told of his experiences and reminded children to be watchful over this nation’s liberties and democratic values "especially in the times that we live in."
Mr. Winkler reminds us that Anne’s story is unique among the numerous extraordinary stories of survival, resistance and reunion that came out of the Holocaust specifically because, at the time she was writing, she was physically and mentally sheltered from the horrors that were beyond the attic. Having perished at Bergen-Belsen death camp, her story is also one of the few surviving accounts by a young victim of the Holocaust. "For educators, it’s a way of introducing the Holocaust without getting into its horrors," Mr. Winkler says. "You can get into that as much or as little as you want."
He says the mundane aspects of Anne’s story, and the seeming normalcy of the Frank family, helps students identify with her plight. "It’s a story of very normal people who were European, who were just living their lives, without expecting this," Mr. Winkler says. "It’s about people they can relate to. Events that go on (in the diary) are normal people are having fights, they’re arguing, she’s thinking about boys. But the background of it is that out in the world there were people who hated her. And would kill her."
Anne Frank Exhibit: A History for Today is on view at Chestnut Tree Books, Princeton Shopping Center, 301 N. Harrison St., Princeton, through June 3. Hours: Mon.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Reservations required for groups. For information, call (609) 292-9274. On the Web: www.state.nj.us/njded/holocaust

