In the Secret Annex - Anne Frank Exhibition

MTI Photos: Noémi Bruzák

Anne's world-famous diary is a shockingly powerful document of human hope and the will to live. The story of Anne and her diary is about viciousness. But it is also about the two years that Anne and her family spent hiding with the help of their self-sacrificing Dutch rescuers and serves as a demonstration of human generosity and courage. This most devastating fury of evil in modern history can be equally well represented by the enormous amounts of information and memories as by the personal and intimate trivialities...as much as the Holocaust and other atrocious acts can be rendered perceptible and comprehensible at all.

 

A few years ago, I visited a concentration camp in Majdenek near Lublin, which has been turned into a memorial. The ashes of hundreds of thousands of people have been collected under a cathedral-size concrete and steel structure on top of a small hill. One is at a loss for words when visiting such a place. One's heart misses a beat and time stands still. I became aware of precisely where I was standing only when I caught sight of a tiny doll with a smashed face displayed in one of the cold barracks - the one-time toy of a young girl whose ashes formed part of the hill.

 

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has brought a travelling exhibition on Anne Frank to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Visitors can follow the stages of her short life on well-arranged displays. The chronologically arranged displays, like the Talmud, offer much commentary: in the middle of the displays are photographs, diary extracts and remembered fragments about the girl and her family. Around these are reports on events that took place at the time - on the war, the devastation and death tolls. The Anne Frank exhibition addresses viewers at the most personal level, but it is just as appropriate for children as for adults. Looking back at visitors in the photographs from the exhibition are victims, survivors, heroes, villains and murderers.

 

The Anne Frank exhibition can only be accessed by walking through the beautiful space of the Holocaust Memorial Center's permanent exhibition. The story of Anne Frank is presented on the balcony of the renovated synagogue. On the way, visitors are introduced to the tragedies experienced by families, cities and countries.

 

Anne Frank, one of the Holocaust's best known victims, was already dreaming about life after the war: at their hiding place she her family were following developments, such as the Battle of Normandy, and the movement of the front as it drew closer to Holland. She was a wunderkind and would have become a great adult.

 

To this day it is not known who informed the Nazis of the Franks, but the dwarfish SS officer Karl Josef Silberbaurer was the one to find Anne's hiding place. Anne was already re-editing her diary, encouraged by radio reports.

 

Anne died from typhoid in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945 and was probably placed in a mass grave. Since 1947, her diary has been translated into 55 languages, and more than 30 million copies have been sold.

 

Author: Tamás Halász