TERNOPOL, Ukraine – The exhibition "Anne Frank: A Lesson from History" has just wrapped up in Ternopol, one of the main administrative centers in western Ukraine. This event, organized in part by the Jewish community of Ternopol, opened a month ago in collaboration with the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and the Anne Frank Museum in Holland. This exhibition narrates the story and tragic destiny of Jews during World War Two. Over the past month, hundreds of community members and local residents of Ternopol visited and learned from this captivating display.
This mobile exhibition has already toured Germany, Poland, the Baltic republics, and 13 cities of Ukraine. The exhibition from the Anne Frank Museum features 67 panels featuring printed photo images, eight of which were prepared by the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and portray the fate that befell Jewish children in Ukraine. The remaining panels, which focus on the life of little Anne, cater to Ukraine with inscriptions in both Russian and Ukrainian.
"We are glad to have hosted this event, recognizing the importance of keeping and passing on knowledge about the past to our future generations. We are hopeful that everybody who visited the exhibition will retell the story of Anne Frank and the fate of Jews of Europe and Ukraine to their relatives and friends," expressed David Fainshtein, the Chairman of the Jewish community of Ternopol. "We feel such didactic events help Jews and non-Jews alike to come to terms with European Jewish history and the need for augmented tolerance today," affirmed the Jewish leader.
This initiative, which took place as part of the project "Fostering Tolerance and Holocaust Lessons", also involved the training of several local youth to serve as tour guides for this presentation. The Anne Frank Diary, which had been translated into Ukrainian by Sfera Publications of the Ukrainian-American Human Rights Bureau, was also available at this month-long event.
Originally from Germany, the Frank family escaped from the Nazis to the Netherlands in 1933. From 1942 and 1944, the family lived in a hideout, during which time the girl kept a diary she had received for her 13th birthday in June 1942. The fascists discovered the Frank family and sent Anne to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in 1945 at the age of fifteen. Anne’s father survived the war and published his daughter’s diary in the Netherlands. Published in many languages and read by millions worldwide, Anne Frank's diary has become the most poignant evidence of how the Jewish people were exterminated during the Second World War.
Since the time that she lived, Anne Frank has left her mark on the world and is the intriguing subject of dozens of publications, television documentaries, movies, and poems since she lived over half a century ago. Her story is symbolic of Europe's entire Jewish Diaspora and its fate at the time of the Holocaust.
You Can Help
