Anne Frank memorabilia goes on display in Nicosia
Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “the diary of Anne Frank is one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and it’s impact on human beings that I have ever read.” Photographs and material of Anne Frank’s life will be in Cyprus at the Leventeion Museum from Monday and the exhibition will honour the writings and life of a girl who has become a symbol of the Holocaust and, more broadly, as a representative of persecution.
Anne Frank was a normal girl entering her teenage years when her family and four friends were forced into hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Her life changed and while the world was in crisis, Anne decided that she would use an autograph book her father bought her for her 13th birthday as a diary. Documenting her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, Anne also wrote about simple things in life like her family, her grades, and boys she flirted with but always prefacing her entries with the greeting ‘Dear Kitty’. It is evident, through her diary that Anne was extremely close to her father, however, she didn’t seem to get along with her mother at all. Her father, Otto Frank, was the only member of the family who survived the Holocaust and lived to publish Anne’s diary, something she had wanted since she began writing.
The exhibition has been on the road since October 1996, when it was first held in Vienna, bringing Anne Frank’s home in Amsterdam closer to her followers. “We want to inform visitors about the Holocaust from Anne and her family’s side,” said a spokesperson for the Leventeion Museum, “so we are talking about historical facts that determined the Frank family’s life including murders, expulsions and of course discretions, part of thousands of people back then.”
Divided into five periods, the Anne Frank exhibition analyses the different interpretations seen from her diary. The first period covers Anne’s years as a baby, while the second period is mainly about Anne’s life in the Netherlands right before the war broke out. From 1939 until 1942, which is the third period, hard times have started and people share their experiences from Anne Frank’s home where she wrote her diary. The fourth period contains memorabilia from Anne’s last days as well as an attempt to copy the room where she wrote her last pages. The fifth period starts from 1945 and runs through to today, displaying the pain and agony caused by all the deaths and after-war shocks.
“The exhibition is based heavily on the way Anne’s and other Jews’ lives changed before and after the Holocaust,” explained Loukia Hadjigavriil, curator at the Leventeion Museum, “you could say that it is a bit of propaganda, really but it concentrates on the everyday life of these people in the Netherlands and how they were exiled from their homes. It’s reality.” Although Anne Frank’s original diary will not be part of the exhibition, material has been gathered to illustrate her life before the war, during the two-year hide out and how she eventually died at a very young age. “The Anne Frank exhibition was created in 1995/96 by the Anne Frank Foundation and aims to inform it’s visitors and bring a form of curiosity about the life of this person and other people who lived during these hard times,” explained a spokesperson for the museum.
The Anne Frank Foundation, which was created in 1957, urges people to fight for freedom and a democratic society without racism. Miep Gies, the woman who helped the Franks go into hiding once said: “Anne symbolises the six million victims of the Holocaust. Her life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot and should not stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives… but her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust.” Every photograph exhibited at the museum displays that freedom did not exist in those days and yet a star, a household name and a person who knew no better than kids today has her writings taught at schools all over the world.
Anne Frank exhibition from Monday until January 15. Leventeion Museum: 17, Ippocratous Street, Laiki Yeitonia, Nicosia. Tel: 22 661475 or 22 671997
