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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Anne Frank's 'Secret Annex' Comes To NYC
00:24:13
For the first time, an exhibit reconstructing the hiding place where Anne Frank and her family evaded Nazi persecution is on view in New York.
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This is all of it. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with us. We are so grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll have a listening party with singer songwriter Joy Alota Coon about her beautiful new album. We'll talk with the directors of a new PBS documentary series on the great Migrations and yes, I said migrations with an F. Yes. We'll also talk with Stacy Horn, the author of the book the Killing Fields of East New York. The first subprime mortgage scandal, a white collar crime spree and the collapse of an American neighborhood. That's all on the docket. So let's get started with the Anne Frank exhibition. Monday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was also the opening day for a new exhibit at the center for Jewish History focused on one of the Holocaust's most well known victims, Anne Frank. Her famous diary gave a firsthand account of a young person's experience hiding with her family and four other Dutch Jews in an Amsterdam addict known as the secret annex. In 1960, Anne's father Otto opened up the Anne Frank House as a museum to their experiences in that very building. And, and since then, it has become one of Amsterdam's most important landmarks. But for the first time, you don't have to fly across the Atlantic to experience it because now, from now until April 30, you can see Anne Frank the exhibition at the center for Jewish History near Union Square. Joining us now to talk about that exhibit, please welcome Ronald Leopold, the executive director of the Anne Frank House. Ronald, welcome to all of it.
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C
Thank you for having me.
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B
Let's first talk about the origins of the exhibit. Where did the idea come from?
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C
So we have been thinking for a longer period of time what we could offer to those audiences who are not able to travel to Amsterdam. And even if they can travel to Amsterdam, I mean, tickets are really hard to get. So they sell out very quickly. And obviously that became more urgent during the pandemic. No one could travel during the time. And although we have beautiful stuff on our website with, for example, a virtual tour, it's still at the end of the day looking at A screen. While we know that the power of Ann's story is also very much extremely experiencing what she went through, that's what we see in Amsterdam. It touches people's hearts. And what we try to do here in New York is actually also touching people's hearts, obviously in a different way. With a replica of her hiding place as being the centerpiece of a much larger presentation of Anne's life. Starting at the childhood years. She was born in Frankfurt Am in Germany, through the forced move of the family to Holland after the Nazis seized power, of course, the time in hiding. And then the legacy that shaped around her diary in the decades after the war.
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B
Why now?
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C
I think this exhibition arrives at a critical moment. We have seen in this country, in my country, around the globe, a rise in anti Semitism, a rise in other forms of group hatred. We really feel our responsibility has never been greater. And this exhibition is in part a response to that responsibility.
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B
I have been to the house in Amsterdam. There is definitely a sense of place while you're there. I'm wondering how you thought about recreating that sense of place here. Because it is so much of what you get when you're there.
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C
So when we started to think about this exhibition, we knew when we want to touch people's hearts. If you go to Amsterdam, the house presents empty spaces. I used to say we're probably the only museum in the world that had not much else to offer than empty spaces. An emptiness that is very telling. An emptiness that is all about absence, about who's not there anymore for a reason. But we knew that if we would bring it to other places, this emptiness would not work the same way because you're not on site. History is a given in Amsterdam. It's not a given in other places. So there were two things that we decided upon at a very early stage. One, it should not just be a replica. It should be a centerpiece of a much larger presentation of Anne's life. And secondly, we want to bring visitors into history, into place and time. The replica now being furnished and bringing more than 100 artifacts to New York that each tell a story. Part of a larger story is also very much bringing our visitors to what then was a place where people in hiding tried to create a new and you might say, false kind of normality. A daily routine, ordinary life under extraordinary circumstances. And we very much hope that that will bring visitors close to history, close to Anne Frank. And in that sense, being a centerpiece of a larger exhibition, really will learn about the past. And hopefully also we'll learn from that past.
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I do want to ask you about the items that were brought here, but before I do that, I just want to touch on one more part of this notion of place bringing history to life. I'm wondering what her story tells us about the importance of place, place in a historical context.
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C
So I think as we move into the 21st century and as we have to think about how to mediate this story to fourth, fifth, sixth generations, there are so many elements of this story that speaks to not just the specific historic circumstances that we obviously present, but also to speak to a more general sense of our shared humanity. And I think that element has always been very compelling in presenting Ann's story. And while you, of course, start with. You start with remembering Ann, you start with remembering where and when it happened. It's also very much also been a story that invites visitors to reflect on how this could have happened and how you could respond to this story in your own community.
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B
What items were brought here?
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C
When you go into hiding, it's all about the hope to survive, right? The hope that one day, one day that war will be over, as she writes in her diary. So we brought objects that tell a story of hope, of hope to survive. We have brought her sister's notes from her Latin course. Why would you study while you're in hiding? Because you hope to survive. We brought the bike of her. Of her boyfriend Peter, the son of the other family in hiding. Why would you bring your bike when you go into hiding? It's because one day, one day you will be able to do what you love to do before you went to riding on your bike in Amsterdam. We brought his mother's party dress, the original party dress of what her real name was Christopher Van Pels. A beautiful dress. Obviously, you're not bringing a party dress when you go into hiding. It's for that one day that you can finally go out and have a party in the most beautiful dress that you own. These items are all telling a story, a different story, a story that tells us something about these eight people, but it tells us very much about what it was like to be in hiding, to hope for survival, not knowing how long it would last. This is and some other documents, like, you know, her father, the sole survivor of those in hiding, lost his entire family. Took him five months to come home, being liberated in Auschwitz on 27th of January, 1945. And there are heartbreaking objects and documents in the exhibition. Let me give you one example. When he arrives in Belgium in May 1945, as a displaced person. And he has to be registered as a displaced person. And he has to fill in this kind of form, you know, kind of bureaucratic form, where he's being asked, what's your civil state? And automatically he crosses, I'm married. Well, by the time he already knows that his wife had not survived. And then he crosses it and says, oh, no, I'm single. So it's just. Good exhibitions are about good artifacts and details of good artifacts, and this is one of them.
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We are talking about the Anne Frank exhibition, which is open through April at the center for Jewish History. Our guest is Ronald Leopold, the executive director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I just am so curious about getting into a little bit of the weeds about the logistics of bringing those items here, because these are priceless items. And of course, my brain goes to, well, who was on the plane with them? How did that get here? I can imagine that was a massive undertaking.
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C
It was a massive. And very. We were very nervous, of course, about that. It was. It was. It was brought to New York on flights and on vessels. We kept an eye on the weather forecast in the North Atlantic to see what that vessel had to go through. And the moment that we were really becoming very nervous was. I think it was two or three weeks before opening day when we saw that the vessel that should bring the last stuff to New York, the last artifacts to New York, was all of a sudden docking first in Halifax and then to New York while we thought it would dock first in New York and then in Halifax. So all of a sudden we were faced with. Confronted with a delay of a couple knowing we would not be able to have any influence on that. And that made us really nervous. But, you know, we have a great team working. We had a great team working on this. And literally on the last evening before we opened it up to museum, to the media, and the last round of vacuum cleaning. That's all part of opening exhibitions.
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That's right.
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C
We were there. Yes.
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Well. And a modern tale of a harried cross Atlantic, you know, crossing again. Made from New York. Made from Amsterdam to New York. Love to hear that story and the care taken. So I'm curious. Just describe for us when I walk in here to the exhibit in New York, what do I see first?
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C
So we introduce visitors to life in Frankfurt in the 1910, 1920s, where German Jewish families had lived for centuries. It was their country. You will see her father dressed in a military uniform, World War I, risking his own life like so many German Jewish men did. And Women did during the First World War, fighting for the country, risking their lives for the country. And then within 15 years after the end of the war, that very same country turned against him, turned against him to expel them and to murder them. So that is very much what you see in the very first, what I would call gallery, the first section of the exhibition. And then their forced move after the Nazis seized power in 1933, their forced move to the Netherlands in 1933, 1934, followed by what was seemingly a happy childhood for Anne. She loved to go to school. She loved to play with her girlfriends on the square where they lived in Amsterdam. It was a new neighborhood by the time, and many German Jewish families that had fled Germany had settled there. So she went to a Montessori school. And one of the, I think, most compelling parts maybe of the exhibition, you will see in that very first section of the exhibition, a photo of a classroom of Anne, 6 years old, 1935, 15 Jewish children out of 32 children in that classroom. And at the very end of the exhibition, we present that very same picture. And we are highlighting 10 of these Jewish children among them, Ann, of course, who did not survive for the sinks for the single reason that they were Jewish. We know a lot about Anne Frank and the entire world knows Anne Frank, right? But those other nine children from that very same classroom, we know hardly anything about them. We know their date of birth, we know their name, and we know when and where they were murdered. Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen, Belsen. Those names. And you will hear the names. You will hear those dates of birth. You will hear if this exhibition is anything. It is also very much not just a tribute to Anne Frank. It's a tribute to those children in that classroom. It's a tribute to 1.5 million Jewish children whose lives were just like Anne's life, full of dreams, hope, talents, everything. And then who were murdered for the single reason that they were Jewish.
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B
This is an exhibit that requires the attendees attention and headspace that other exhibits might not necessarily require. How do you encourage someone to get into the right frame of mind for coming to this exhibit?
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C
I think for us and for. I would say that my colleagues in the field, the ones who are running these kind of institutions and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive as we go into the 21st century, as we go towards mediating this memory towards fourth, fifth generations, we need to rethink the way we do that. It's obvious that classic exhibitions, in terms of going from one gallery to another, going from one show Showcase to another. Looking at an object and reading something about that object is not working well anymore with these. So we are mediating this memory to audiences who live in a different world, who live in a different. Who have a different media landscape. And we really need to think about it. And I think this exhibition is kind of an answer that the Anne Frank House is giving to that very important question. And it's also, in a way, an invitation as a starting point for a discussion, what kind of other answers that might be, because I'm not pretending this is the only answer or the final answer. I think it's an incredible important question how we keep the memory of the Holocaust alive as we move forward in time and as the distance in time grows from the end of the war to. So I really feel. Using photo, video, animation, video projections, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. I do not like the word immersive, but it has, of course, an immersive component in it. And I do feel that this is one way, and hopefully a very effective way to bring across that incredible important memory of what has happened 80 years ago.
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B
You would encourage people to come with a sense of reverence. Yes.
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C
We are aware that the interest in the story of Anne Frank is still rather increasing than diminishing. We also are aware that the knowledge about the story is good. Less and less. We are used to listening to our grandparents. We are used to listening to our parents when it came, when it, when it was about this memory. Fourth, fifth generations do not have that privilege. We are used to listening to these incredible, compelling, powerful testimonies of survivors. As we have ever fewer survivors in our communities, we need to look for different ways to. To bring this memory towards these new generations. I think knowing also that I don't know about the United States, but for sure, and I've seen some. Some surveys about knowledge of the Holocaust here in this country. I know the surveys of the knowledge of the Holocaust in my country. We need to protect, we need to provide context to the story. But we are still fortunate that we have that incredible entry point, which is, I would almost say, a natural connection to Ann, regardless of where that entry point is. Some because she was a teenager, some because she was an incredible talented writer. Whatever your entry point is, it will bring you to her and through that story, it will bring you to the history of the Holocaust.
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B
You mentioned, you know, the younger generations now coming to this, having cell phones in their hand and social media at their beck and call. And I'm wondering if you think about the relationship between a teen like that, with the world in a tiny little thing in their hands, versus a paper diary of someone who may be that exact same age. And the difference between those records that we now keep about our shared history and the differences between not trying to put any judgment on the cell phone, but in the way that we now record our histories. Do you think about that?
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C
A few years ago, we produced a YouTube series called the Video Diary of Anne Frank. It was all about the idea that on her birthday, she would have got a cell phone instead of a diary. And when someone. But the person who came up with the idea. And I vividly remember my first conversation with him, because I almost sent him out of my room, I said, we're not gonna do this. We're not gonna do this. And then slowly, while discussing and brainstorming with lots of people, and especially also with these young people whose reality is cell phones and other media. And I must say, if. And this is actually the lesson I got from that video series, and I can invite each and everyone to watch it. If quality, if integrity, if historic reliability is in place, and these are really the three pillars of everything we do, there are lots of opportunities to do something with new technology. It's not a technology that finally defines how memory brings. It's this three, I would almost say, triangle. Quality, integrity, historic reliability, knowledge. If those are in place, you can do a lot.
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B
You've touched on a couple of themes. I think the theme of possibility and hope in their lives, in the way they live their lives in this tiny little space. I'm wondering what the themes you touch on both in the exhibit and you find yourself personally going back to these days. Is it hope? Is it.
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C
What we see in Amsterdam is, I think, also what we're going to see here in New York, which is people bring their own lives towards a place, towards an exhibition, and connect to that exhibition or to that place from their own life, and give meaning to that experience from their own lives. And what I feel is it's incredibly enriching when we are opening up to all those experiences, because all those experiences, because it teaches us something about who we are and who we want to be. So if we are presenting this with a multifaceted lens on Ann's life, it's also because we see so many elements that speak to us about what it means to be human. And, of course, her being, as you mentioned in your introduction, her being the face of the Holocaust or the symbol of the Holocaust, but there is so much more to her. And when her father, who then in 1947, published the diary, made her dream come true. He always said, this is a Dokuma human. This is a human document. This tells us about who we are and who we want to be. And I think that opens up to the human experience, that and richness and has always enriched the reception of the story of Anne Frank through the decades.
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B
You mentioned that the house in Amsterdam. It's very hard to get tickets, I can attest to that. This exhibit here in New York has only been open a few days, but have you been getting some reaction from people? Have you heard things as they leave? What's the reaction been that you've been hearing?
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C
Well, the first reaction is that we're almost sold out until we have released it until April 30th. And almost sold out at opening day is amazing. It's overwhelming also. But what we've seen so far from responses from the visitors is mostly very emotional, very emotional. So people in tears, which tells us that hopefully we have achieved what we were meant to do was we want to touch their hearts. Touching hearts is also very much a starting point for empathy. And empathy is a starting point for kind of, if I may say so, education. Starting point for reflection on how this could have happened and making sure it will never happen again.
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B
Does the success mean you're bound for other cities other than New York at some point?
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C
Well, I suspect we will look into the possibility of maybe staying longer in New York for a while. We have produced this exhibition in a sustainable way, which means we could travel with it. Let's see what happens here in New York and we'll decide about that later.
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All right, listeners, stay tuned for that. All right. We've been talking about the Anne Frank exhibit happening through April at at the center for Jewish History. Our guest has been Ronald Leopold, the executive director at the Anne Frank House. Ronald, thank you so much for your time this morning.
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C
Thank you for having me.
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B
Afternoon. I should say.
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A
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