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Teens Off The Couch: The Diary of Anne Frank
Anne Frank - The Whole Story + Museum of Tolerance
Anne Frank's popularity gets renewed with each new generation that reads her diary. While the details of her tragic story are well known, what keeps her book on everyone's reading list is that it so powerfully chronicles the life if an ordinary 13 year old girl - her battles with her mother, her first crush and the awkwardness of one's social life at that age. Of course, the fact that these 'normal' struggles are taking place against the background of World War Two and the Holocaust make the book an indelible part of every young person's literary education. The classic film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank sticks to Anne's chronicles of life in the attic, but we like Anne Frank - The Whole Story because it gives a fuller picture of Anne and her community. Spending a third of the film on Anne’s pre-hiding life gave us a portrait of her not just as a victim of Nazi persecution, but as a thriving girl just like our teens. We see her first boyfriend, her birthday parties, and her concern over new shoes even as the Nazi’s invade Holland. The second portion of the movie occurred while Anne was in hiding, showing the strains of two families and a single man living together, along with Anne growing up and falling love with Peter. The final third traced Anne’s life in the concentration camps; first in Holland, then when her family was chosen for transport to Auschwitz, and finally in the brutal Bergen-Belson where Anne and her sister died. We learned about the people in Anne’s life. We compared Miep and the co-workers who hid the families in the attic to the people who told the Nazis where the Franks were hiding, providing our teens with stark examples of the effect of each person’s choices in the face of evil.
Our trip to the Museum of Tolerance gave us the perfect opening to discuss prejudice and intolerance in the context of the past and in our own times. The Museum gives a human face to the Holocaust by giving each visitor a Photo Passport that describes a typical child living under the Nazis. During the tour, we stopped at a kiosk to update what was happening to the child at that time in history, some were transferred to a concentration camp and others went into hiding, and finally, whether or not the child survived. While none of the exhibits are gruesome, the Museum of Tolerance uses multi-media installations, air temperature, lighting, and furnishings to consciously and subconsciously convey the darkness that fell over Europe under the Nazis. At the Outdoor Café Scene exhibit, life-like actors discuss life in 1930s Germany. During a conversation between two women, the German Jew dismisses Hitler and his growing threats while the other begs her to emigrate. Another conversation highlight a Nazi delighted with the change in his country. As each person spoke a screen in the back flashed the fate of each person. The Jewish German woman died in the concentration camps and the Nazi joined the military. We noticed that there wasn't anything unusual about the people at the café, they acted just like we do at our local restaurant. Every visitor re-enacts the division of families upon arrival at the concentration camps. To exit the Holocaust exhibit, we had to chose to leave via the "Able-bodied" door or the "Children and Others" door-a safe way to make a profound point. As we exited through separate doors, we all found ourselves at the Wall of Righteousness, a tribute to the people to who risked their lives to save Holocaust victims. Each name plate lists the person and the number of people saved, underscoring the most important message at the Museum of Tolerance, that one person can make a difference.
Our Buttery Bits of Wisdom about this film:
- What Worked for Us: The mini-seriesis an adaptation of Anne Frank: A Biography by Melissa Muller. It does contain scenes from The Diary of Anne Frank, but gives a wider view of her life and the era than the diary, or the original film adaptation (that is 50 years old this year, but takes place only in the attic and is based on a play). The mini-series stars Ben Kingsley as Otto Frank and our kids appreciated knowing Anne is a teenager before her captivity, as well as having a sense of what happened at the end of her life.
- Red Flags: Caution! The scenes in the concentration camp are explicit. For teens who would be too disturbed, consider reading Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl. Another young adult book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak in which a German family hides a Jewish man. We liked this book because it gave a German view of the era and the family’s choice to save someone, showing another selfless response to evil. For younger kids, My Friend Anne Frank by Jacqueline Van Maarsen is a wonderful book by Anne’s best-friend, full of recollections of Anne and their adolescent life. For adults, Phillip Roth writes about Anne Frank and her effect on our understanding of the Holocaust in The Ghost Writer.
Our Tips for Talking with your Teens about this Film:
- History Savvy: Had she lived, Anne would have turned 80 years old in June 2009. And August 4 marked the 65th anniversary of the family's arrest by German security agents.
- Cinema Savvy: In Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank teaches her gang-infested Long Beach high-school students to keep a diary, after having them read Anne Frank. The whole class goes on a visit to The Museum of Tolerance.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance
9786 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 553.8403
Age Recommendation: 12 and upTime Allotment: An afternoon
Our Buttery Bits of Wisdom on Taking Teens to the Museum of Tolerance
- What We Learned: The Museum guides groups through the Holocaust portion, then visitors are free to explore around the halls discussing prejudice, personal responsibility, and intolerance. Many of the exhibits are interactive requiring visitors to think about their own opinions and values. Parents should be cautioned that the concentration camp exhibit is not for the faint of heart, but is an important way to teach kids what the Holocaust was really like.)
- Don't Miss Meeting a Survivor: Almost every day one or more Holocaust survivors tell their experience and end with a question and answer exchange. The woman we listened to described how she lost a shoe during a winter death march in Poland so she had to hide and escape, she could no longer march. One of the teenagers asked “why not?” Apparently, not all Angeleno teens understand snow. Our Holocaust survivor was very open about her experience, making history come alive.
- Schedule at Museum: The Museum offers a variety of programs. Every Wednesday at 2PM, the Museum shows movies about WWII, the Holocaust or the Middle East. Every month, the Museum presents “From Hate to Hope,” a talk by the perpetrator and victim of a hate crime that delves into the roots of bigotry and hate. Family Sundays occur on a regular basis. Check the website (make link http://www.museumof/tolerance.com) for the schedule.
Our Tips for Expanding this Adventure:
- COOL FACT: A majority of the visitors to the Museum of Tolerance are middle or high school students.
- Civil and Human Rights at the Museum of Tolerance: Exhibits on the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and the genocides of the last several decades allowed us to discuss the destructive force of prejudice throughout history and how to overcome it. Our teens saw a film clip of a young black man respectfully, but firmly, stand up to a policeman during the Civil Rights marches. The “POV Diner” exhibit presented a short film clip about a fatal car accident caused by teenage drunk driving, then allowed us to judge whose actions were responsible for the tragedy. The store owner who sold the alcohol to a minor? The girlfriend who gave it to the driver? The mother who earlier found bottles in her son’s room? The driver who drank and drove? Our visit to the Museum of Tolerance provided the fodder to talk about a situation our teens are faced with in their current lives. Our teens learned in a variety of contexts that the choices of a single person are significant.
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