Keeping Up Museums
The Amsterdam Chestnut Tree
Keeping up museums takes many forms. See the New York Times, October 2, 2007. There is an old chestnut tree, outside the window, outside Anne Frank's room in the Annex where she hid with her family during World War II in Amsterdam. It is ailing and about to get emergency resucibarktation measures. It has fungi and rot, like the rest of us, at 150 years old.
While the globally familiar Anne Frank house gets publicity for its fine work to boost this tree, perhaps the Anne Frank house could expand its exhibit to include reference to those others in WWII who kept diaries, children, teens, young adults. Themes emerge in travel - what it was like in WWII is one of them.
We deeply revere Anne Frank, but there are other diarists of World War II, not just Anne Frank.
Deaths of children.
Use her fame to teach about some of the others, like Petr Ginz, in Prague. His diary came to light late, but he was involved and witnessed the everyday deprivations and deportations of Jews for several years of the occupation, before himself being sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. See Places of Petr Ginz. He was not sequestered and in hiding; but lived his life with day-to-day Nazi contact.
Anne died at Bergen-Belsen, see Germany Road Ways, Bergen Belsen ; others of her family died at Auschwitz, is that so? She had been quiet and introspective, and gifted. Petr was artistic, but more rough-and-tumble. Then again, he could be: he was not in hiding.
Child diarists, WWII. Keeping in mind more than Anne Frank. The death camps. Here, Auschwitz, Poland, where Petr Ginz of Prague died
Amsterdam, Hollandsche Schouwberg, Theater, Holocaust Memorial