Saturday, December 13, 1997

Anne Frank exhibit reminds us that the inconceivable happened

By Jim Jones /Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Someone gave me a "No Hate" sticker as I entered the "Anne Frank and the World" exhibition, a chilling look at the Holocaust that has made its way to Texas.

The traveling exhibit, which came to Fort Worth from Atlanta last month, was created by the Anne Frank Center in New York. Its goal is to prevent the horror of the Holocaust from ever occurring again.

To me the most disheartening item is a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a line of priests in clerical collars extending their arms in the "Heil Hitler" Nazi salute.

We don't like to be reminded of it. But most Christians in Germany, both Protestants and Catholics, publicly supported the Nazi regime.

A few souls, the exhibit happily shows us, risked their lives to protect Jewish families, though.

Anne Frank almost survived because of such heroism. Through her famous diary, we all know how she and her family were hidden away by non-Jews in an attic in Amsterdam from 1942 until being discovered in 1944.

She was transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she and her sister, Margot, died of typhus only a few weeks before the camp was liberated.

In the exhibit, we see large photographs of Anne and Margot frolicking at the beach. Another shows them at a wedding shortly before the Frank family went into hiding.

Like any other girl, Anne Frank yearned for freedom. But she showed remarkable maturity. She tried to remain cheerful for the sake of others in the attic. But she didn't always succeed.

"You can't always crush your feelings," Anne wrote. "Cycling, dancing, whistling ... feeling young, to know that I am free. That's what I long for."

Harry Kahn, a Texan who, like many other Jews now living in America, recalls some of the horrors of Nazi Germany, escorted me through the exhibit.

He's about the same age Anne Frank would have been if she had survived. He was born in Germany. He and his parents escaped from the town of Munstermaifeld near the French border in 1938 when he was 10.

Still, he was old enough to remember the accelerating Nazi persecution. Pictures in the exhibit showing signs such as "No Jews Allowed" were familiar to Kahn. He was there on a cruel November night that we now know as the night of broken glass.

Kahn said he was less than 100 yards away when Nazis burned his synagogue in his hometown..

"Some of the other male children were taken away and put on trains to be taken to the death camps," Kahn said.

Seven weeks later, Kahn's parents were able to escape from Germany. But many of his aunts and uncles and other relatives died in Nazi captivity.

The exhibit in the Tandy Outlet Square in downtown Fort Worth behind the ice skating arena is free and open to the public through Dec. 13.

Jewish and Christian docents, all wearing yellow Stars of David, answer questions from children and others who come through, Kahn said.

"One of the questions most asked is, 'How could this happen in a civilized world?' " Kahn said.

When this question is asked, he has no answer.

But Kahn says many have forgotten those hate-filled days of Nazi Germany.

Last year, he returned to Munstermaifeld and was happy to find that the walls of the old synagogue he saw burn are still standing.

Townspeople have created a meditation area behind the synagogue.

Such signs of change in Germany give us hope. Still, the unspeakable atrocities did happen. By being reminded of the Holocaust's evils, we can resist tyranny and never again give ourselves up to such hate.

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(Jim Jones is religion editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Write to him at: the Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101.)

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(c) 1997, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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