>> We say this one.
I do a reading, and I introduce the book,
but the International Department of the Anne Frank House,
they go from one project to the next project to
the next project to the next project,
and that's how it's been for 30 years.
[NOISE] My great close friend and
colleague is about to retire next year,
who really built that international program.
Let me turn my phone off.
And he's going to retire.
I really just felt that someone had to write the story.
[NOISE]
Oh, God, they're still calling.
No one had actually done it.
I was hearing all these stories from over 30 years,
but someone just had to put them all together
before it was all lost because as I say,
my colleagues have been my colleagues for 30 years,
so they're all kind of coming up to retirement.
And I just didn't want it all to be dissipated.
>> Absolutely, and it reminds me
of the impetus for
the project that we're currently working on.
My museum director, Katherine Lewis
was at Kennesaw State University back in
2003 when they took
the Anne Frank in the World exhibit and it was
the first location in the southeast.
Specifically, they were looking for
somewhere to take it within Georgia,
South Carolina, Alabama, that area.
>> What year was that Adena?
>> It was 2003. And the exhibit stayed in our museum,
we had actually a space purpose-built for
it for three years,
and then it moved on and there is a copy of Anne Frank
in the World that is seemingly
permanently on display at
the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust,
which has offices in Sandy Springs.
>> Sandy Springs, that's right.
Because I was in Atlanta last year,
I was speaking at the Atlanta Jewish Book Festival
and we tried to get hold,
I was with my colleague from the Anne Frank Center,
and we tried to get hold of the woman that
runs that display at Sandy Springs because we
were staying just not
a million miles away, it was [inaudible] Springs.
It was just a couple of stops on the train,
and I really wanted to go and see it.
And it'd be nostalgic
for me because Anne Frank in the World was
the exhibition I cut my teeth on, of its time.
It was of its time, black and white,
and very big, but I wanted to see it in situ again.
So is it still on show there?
>> It is. And I don't know what
their particular status is at
this moment with the pandemic and everything,
but they have it on display in their offices,
and it's open to the public.
And as far as I know,
they don't have any intention
of taking it off
display until they move to a new location.
>> I think they're fundraising for that as well.
>> They are. So like everything,
there's a lot of discussion about who's
best situated to do
what in the world of Holocaust commemoration.
And in Atlanta, in the Metro area,
there is also the Breman Museum of Jewish Heritage,
which has its own Holocaust exhibit.
And our museum at Kennesaw State,
we have a permanent Holocaust exhibit as well
as a body of traveling exhibits that we've produced.
So the exhibit world,
there are a lot of available resources.
But there's a lot of education that
needs to be done and in multiple ways.
[OVERLAPPING]
>> Lots of it, for sure.
>> Before we get too far down this road,
would it be all right if I just recorded
the introduction to our conversation,
so that that's on the record?
>> Yes. Can I just ask you, I just
must very quickly return this call.
>> Sure.
>> It's someone I need to speak to.
>> So today is Tuesday,
August 11th, 2020,
and I'm here on Zoom on behalf of
Kennesaw State University with Gillian Perry.
And we will be recording
a Legacy Series interview focused on her career,
but especially as it relates to
commemorating the life and legacy of Anne Frank.
So could you please begin by stating your full name?
>> Gillian Karen Perry,
sometimes known as Gillian Walnes Perry.
>> And do you agree to this interview?
>> Most certainly.
>> Wonderful. Thank you. So could you
please start by telling me when and where you were born?
>> Oh, you shouldn't ask a woman her age.
[LAUGHTER]
I was born in London in 1951.
>> And how would you characterize
your youth and early education?
>> I was a child of the 1950s, postwar England.
And when I think about my childhood,
I think of it in black and white.
And I think that was possibly
because cars were all black in those days.
So we didn't have the vivacity of color
on our streets and our surroundings that we do now.
Although, I must say,
we lived in a house where my father took
incredible pride in his back garden.
So we had lovely flowers throughout the summer.
And I do remember beautiful summers starting from May,
which was my birthday,
where we would have birthday parties in the garden.
And I come from a large family on my father's side,
who were Polish immigrants at around 1910, 1911.
And the cousins are still all very close.
So we've got cousins in America as well,
my grandfather, his brother.
My grandfather came to London,
his brother went on to New York.
And sadly, they only ever
met once in the rest of their lives.
And it's quite telling because their grandchildren and
children are on
constant social media contact every single day.
I actually had a meeting
at Facebook in Silicon Valley last year,
and I said to the Director of Communications,
I just often wonder what our grandparents would say,
who only ever saw each other once after they emigrated as
young men if they knew that their descendants
were in constant social media contacts. Very exciting.
>> Absolutely. So was religious identity
important in your family?
>> It was very important.
Yes. Not necessarily from an orthodox point of view.
My family followed the traditions and the holidays.
But interestingly, and I say this to a lot of
my Jewish friends, interestingly,
my Polish grandmother insisted on
having us all over on Christmas Day and having
a Christmas tree and one of
my uncles would dress as Father Christmas.
And so we enjoyed the best of
both worlds because we felt very Jewish family.
But we also enjoyed everything else
that was going on around us in our society.
>> Did you know a lot of other Jewish families
and also a lot of non-Jewish families?
>> Yes. My brother and I went to non-Jewish schools.
We went to a Church of England School,
which was actually mainly populated by Jewish kids.
And so we felt very assimilated.
We obviously played with
all the kids in our street because in those days,
you didn't sit in front of a computer
all day like my grandson does.
We were thrown out into
the street in the morning by my mom,
and we weren't expected
step over the door step until it was lunchtime.
And then we were thrown out again for the rest of
the afternoon because she had her chores.
She had her housework to do.
>> So when did you first
learn about the events of the Holocaust?
>> During my childhood,
there was whisperings going
on between adult family members.
And even as a child,
I picked up that there had been a great catastrophe,
which affected none of our close family,
but distant cousins of my grandparents.
In the middle to late 1950s,
I don't recall when it was.
My grandparents wanted my father,
who was the youngest son.
They were a large group of siblings,
but he was the youngest son,
to go on a trip to Poland to see
if he could find any remnants of the Polish family.
And he was willing to do that.
But my mother put her foot down because she didn't want
her husband to go off behind
the iron curtain and never be seen again.
So I don't think
my brother did because he was three years younger,
but I picked up those whisperings about these things.
And the first I
heard the diary of Anne Frank serialized on the radio,
a serialization of Anne Frank
really just listen to to the readings from her diary,
didn't really contextualize how she was writing,
what she was writing her diary set against.
As a teenager, I read a book by
a survivor called Samuel Pisar. He may know the name.
He became a famous diplomat Frenchman.
And this described in vivid details the camps.
In the 1980s, I
became very involved in the campaign for Soviet Jewry.
And this was as a result of Sharansky's wife,
Avital Sharansky visiting our town not
long after her husband had been
sent away to the Soviet labor camp.
And I had an interest in human rights.
I had joined up our local amnesty international group,
but I found it a little bit
daunting because they were taking on
the human rights issues of the whole world.
And I went to hear Avital speak.
She came to our town at the time because we were
living in a Bournemouth,
which is on the South Coast.
And I was just so overwhelmed by what
she had to say and how moving it was.
And I became very involved in the campaign for
Soviet Jewry so much
so that I was the leader of
our very active group for seven years.
We were also a conference town.
And so the political party conferences
would be held in our town every year.
So we got to meet
people at the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
and we would always go and
present them with something and thank
them for their work on behalf of
the Soviet Jewry campaign,
particularly Margaret Thatcher.
And so we really became a very active group.
I visited the Soviet Union twice to take
supplies and moral support to
the Refsnik who were trapped in the Soviet Union.
But then I became a refusing myself three
times because even as late as 1990,
my details were still logged on
the Soviet computers as an agitator.
So even at that late stage,
I wasn't allowed back in.
And it was actually 1988,
when the Soviet Jewry campaign was
waning because Gorbachev was in power.
And I was feeling a little bit out on a limb.
My children were still small,
and it was just at that point.
I've been involved in
various exhibitions and activities in the town.
And I received a call from
David Westendorp who was my rabbi,
but also his father and
Otto Frank were very great friends in Amsterdam.
And it's one of these momentous calls that changes
your whole life because he said Jilly,
he said, I've heard about
this traveling exhibition that's come
to England from the Anne Frank House.
And I would love to bring it to our town.
Would you help me?
And I said, David, I'd love to do that.
So we formed a committee,
and the upshot was that nine months later,
the Anne Frank in the World exhibition,
which we've just been talking about came to
a venue on the outskirts of the town.
It was located in the Art College,
which is now part of the very vibrant university campus.
And within three weeks of it being on show,
we had 10,000 visitors.
And I thought, Oh, my God,
this is something I really want to remain involved with.
So I just got myself on a plane to Amsterdam from London.
It's only an hour and set up a meeting with
the Director of the Anne Frank House and convinced
him that they really needed a coordinator in
the UK to continue the tour of
this magical, wonderful exhibition.
And so for my since,
I was appointed the British representative of
the Anne Frank House and got a group of people together.
And then the following year, 1990,
we started forming a charity so that we could
help people raise funds that were trying
to bring the exhibition to their area.
And so the charity became the Anne Frank Trust,
started from my home,
not even in London, out of
London with one part time administrator.
And that's how it all started.
So that call from David,
saying, would I help him bring the exhibition?
And the trust is probably one of the most
flourishing of the partner organizations
of the Annne Frank House.
When I left four years ago when I retired,
it had 35 members of paid staff taking
the exhibitions in really some of
the most challenging areas of the UK,
both socially and economically.
So just an uncial question.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Absolutely. And before we get
into just a little bit more about
the relationships among these different organizations,
how it all works together.
So you mentioned that you had
an interest in human rights and you
got involved in the Refusnik cause,
and was there something in
your education or your early life
that sparked you to
be to think broadly about human rights?
>> I tell you what it was, and I think it's what
happens to a lot of people when they have children.
It was really when I had young children,
I started thinking about
the world and the world that they would grow up into.
And so that's really fired
my interest initially in
human rights and making the world a better place.
And I know just from my years when,
we'd had new supporters or new trustees on the board,
and you say, well, what's really got you
interested in working for this cause.
And they've said the same thing, Well,
I've got young children,
and I want to try and make the world a
better place for them.
So I think really that was it.
And also, things like reading Holocaust literature,
do you remember, you must have heard of the movie,
the American mini series
Holocaust that was shown in the early 1970s,
which actually opened the eyes to many people,
including Jewish people about
the deep impact of the Holocaust.
And so there were things going on around very much,
I had this feeling that if
my family hadn't got out there by the grace of God,
And the same feeling that I got,
when I heard Avatel Sarnsky speech,
she could have been me.
My family could have remained
behind the Iron Curtain, etc.
So it was very much this feeling of,
well, I'm very comfortable
and happy and leading a good life.
Let's do something about the others.
And I mean, it's been an incredible journey, Adina.
It's just been an amazing journey that
I've been privileged to be part
of for 32 years because at
first David made that call to me in the summer of 1988,
and here I am in the summer of 2020,
still peddling my course.
>> So tell me a little bit more about then
the relationship between the Anne
Frank House in Amsterdam,
and then the trust in the UK,
and there's an international organization
that travels the exhibits.
I know there was more than one at
this point, around the world.
Did most of those organizations form organically,
the way that yours did or was there a concerted?
>> Yes, it's all down to people.
And well, certainly the Anne Frank Center in the USA,
which is now known as the Anne Frank Center
for mutual respect.
That evolved out of Otto Frank forming a group of people,
bringing a group of people together in
New York in around 1977,
and they became known as the friends of
the Anne Frank House, including I mean,
they had some very notable people on their letter paper,
including Albert Einstein and various other people.
And that evolved out of that.
And again, very often,
it's down to one person.
And in that case,
it was down to a Holocaust survivor called Jack Polak.
You may have heard about the book and the documentary
about his life and his life with his wife.
If you haven't, Google,
Steal a Pencil for Me.
It's a phenomenal story.
They fell in love in Bergen Belsen, say no more.
And they both came over to
America after the war and started family,
and they dedicated their lives to education.
He was a businessman, successful businessman in New York.
And he was one of the founders of the Annne Frank Center,
and it became his great passion in life.
He died about five years ago at age 103,
I think he lived to be, and his wife died similarly.
I think she also made it to 100 as well, 99 or 100.
So it's Steal a Pencil for Me. It's absolutely.
So he was really the driving force to establish
the Anne Frank Center in New York.
I was the driving force to establish it in
the UK and then in our latest partner organization.
So we're all licensed by the Anne Frank house to carry
out education in Anne's name in our relevant countries.
One of the latest ones,
which I mentioned in my talk was Argentina,
the Centro Anna Frank in Buenos Aires,
which opened in 2009.
And again, it was a relationship between
a human rights activist who was imprisoned,
by the way, by the dictators in the 70s.
And he was an educator as well.
And again, great interest in the Holocaust.
His wife is a well remembered in in Buenos airs.
And so, you know,
it's a question of convincing
the Anne Frank House that
these were the people that could do it.
And so that's really
how those partner organizations started.
There's also a partner organization in Berlin,
the Annne Frank Centrum which have a base and
a permanent exhibit on display. They do some good stuff.
It's a small organization.
There was one an operation in Austria and Vienna,
the Anne Frank Vienna, but
I don't think that exists anymore.
So there we are Otto Frank
started the Anne Frank House in 1960,
and that sprouted these partner organizations.
And then you asked me also in your notes about where does
the Anne Frank Fons in Switzerland sit in all this?
Well, this was something that Otto started.
In 1966, I believe he set it up.
He'd opened the Anne Frank house in 1960,
but he actually lived in Switzerland.
And in the early 60s,
the Anne Frank House was staffed by quite a few radicals.
They read about it in my book,
the early days of the Anne Frank House.
And they were actually coming to
blows a little bit between
things that they were doing activities they were doing,
like an exhibition on apartheid in South Africa
where they equated the
South African leaders with the Nazis,
and Otto didn't agree with this.
So they saw him as
an old man that was out of the picture now.
So there were some tensions.
So in 1966, Otto set up
a different foundation, in Switzerland,
where he could have benign control over
it that would administer
the rights and royalties to the diary.
So if anyone wants to do a commercial production based on
Anne Frank's story like a movie or
a play or a piece of music,
etc, they would have to
get acquire the rights from
the Anne Frank Foundation in Switzerland.
More recently, they've been
doing their own educational programs,
they have sponsored and been very
involved in an exhibition at
the Frankfort Jewish Museum
about the Frank family and its history because,
of course, the Frank family came from Frankfort.
They always say that, well, Amsterdam,
is the Franks didn't spend very much time in Amsterdam,
but the roots of the family are in Frankfort.
So there's not always been the
best of relations going on between the two organizations.
You may have read about this and a lot
of conflict about who owns the rights to the artifacts,
who owns the rights to the photographs.
And so, yeah, there's ongoing tension.
On a personal level, they
all get on because they're all doing the same thing.
But on a professional level,
there's a lot of tension going on there.
>> Yeah, reminds me a little bit of living in Atlanta,
there is a very complex relationship among
the various organizations that are
related to the Martin Luther King family.
So there's the King Center and
the Martin Luther King National Historic Park,
through the National Park Service, and all.
It's amazing how people who have the same basic mission,
things can get a little muddy when you get into
the rights and reproductions and those details.
>> I was going to go and visit
the Martin Luther King Center when I was there last year.
I was there in, it was early November.
It was so cold.
I thought I'm going to the deep south.
It's going to be like Florida,
it's going to be sunny,
and I was freezing.
So the thought of walking around
a park just didn't hack it for me.
So in the end,
I arranged with one of the producers
at CNN to go into their headquarters,
and he took me on a lovely tour out of CNN.
>> That's a lot more comfortable. Yeah.
It's a pretty really part of town,
actually, the old [inaudible].
So take me back to the opening of this exhibit in the UK.
And you mentioned that you had 30,000 people come in,
sorry 10,000, in a short period of time.
How was it received? What was the publicity like?
>> Well, let's just go back a step because this
wasn't the first exhibit in the UK.
My colleague [inaudible] had come
and brought the exhibition to London.
It was launched in London,
in the Mall Galleries,
which are very near to Buckingham Palace in 1986,
so that was a year after it first being created in 1985.
And he spent six months living in
London and with
very limited connections because he was Dutch,
trying to get a tour off the ground of the country.
And he was very successful, actually.
And it was really when he met me
and the team in
Bournemouth and saw how serious we were about this.
I mean, because he was encountering a few problems
that because he wasn't British,
and in his enthusiasm and I guess a bit of naivety,
he would go and have meetings and say, Scotland,
and he would find that
the exhibition was being hijacked by
radical extremists who wanted to use the exhibition as
a platform for peddling the Palestinian cause.
So he was finding himself in sometimes a
little bit of difficulty in hot water.
So to have an organization
as a partner organization based in Britain,
keeping an eye on who
these people were and what were the background in
their politics and what their aims
were for the exhibition, really worked out.
And with so many of these things,
it's all about timing.
You get the timing right
when they're looking for something,
the opportunity is there,
as with everything in life.
So they opened the exhibition first in
1985 at the [inaudible]
which is adjacent to the Anne Frank House.
It was opened by Queen Beatrix.
And then a bit later,
it went over to New York.
And the hope for sponsors never
came forward to keep it going,
and it found itself languishing
in a big warehouse for quite a while.
And then simultaneously again in Frankfurt,
the home city of the Frank family.
And then Ian Eric
started putting his feelers out all around the world,
and as I say, the rest is history.
So we operated under a license and an MOU from
the Anne Frank house that our remit
would be Britain and Ireland as well,
because we went to places like
Dublin and to places in Ireland.
On a personal level,
I was very lucky because occasionally,
the Anne Frank House would come to me and say,
look, we need someone to go and speak at an opening.
Would you go to South Africa?
Would you go to Hong Kong?
Would you go to Sao Paulo?
So I've been very lucky in that respect that I have
done openings in different places around the world,
but just on a personal level.
We were really confined to
our educational activities to Britain and Ireland.
>> So then this world travel of the exhibit
was happening somewhat simultaneously.
Well, you had the license for Great Britain and Ireland,
they had this international arm that was
arranging for the exhibit to travel to Asia.
>> And the panel was being
printed in different languages, as well.
Sometimes on one exhibit,
there'd be two languages.
I don't know how it is in the Atlanta,
the one at Sandy Springs,
whether it's just English.
So for example, if it would go to somewhere like Florida,
they would have it in English and Spanish.
But obviously, if it went to somewhere like Russia,
they would just have it in the Russian language.
So they were busy printing different copies
in different languages all the time.
>> And the programming
that came along with the exhibit's travels,
was that left up to the individual organizers?
>> Yes, it usually was.
We weren't prescriptive.
When we first started out,
for many years,
it was a big traveling exhibit that would go
to a prominent venue in the center of a city.
So it'd be like the cathedral or the city hall
or the art gallery or museum,
somewhere very prominent,
and all the schools would come in.
And we relied very much on volunteers.
We'd have volunteer docents.
But the process was that
either I would identify
an area where I wanted to take it,
perhaps they had some social issues,
some instances of racism,
etc., and target the local council,
the local authority,
perhaps the mayor or the leader of the county,
etc., and go and
convince them that they wanted this project.
And they would pay for it.
I might get some sponsorship over there.
And then I would go to that area.
I used to love this Adena,
traveling around the country,
walking into a room and setting up
a complete new board
of strangers that would each have their specific roles,
so people from the education,
from the equalities, from the civics teams,
from the mayor's office, perhaps,
from the local community representatives,
the youth engagement office,
all these people, bringing them all together,
assigning them their tasks,
the public relations and marketing departments,
so that they knew they were going to get some bang
for the buck from their investment.
And so each one had its own feel.
So sometimes they'd put on, for example,
a dramatic production to
coincide or there'd be a conference,
or the local cinema
would get involved and they'd bring a load of movies,
that film festival linked
to it, all kinds of things like that.
But over the last 15 years or so,
things started to change, evolve.
I steered by the international work,
and you'll see it in my book,
how that evolved from them first getting
bringing this idea of peer education,
which actually in the book describes how it started.
The piloted it in the Austrian valleys in the Troll,
and how that really took over.
It's not to say we don't still have
big community exhibits that you
staged or like they've recently
staged at the Florida Holocaust Museum.
I think it was in Orlando.
But when they have
these Exhibits now because we've worked with
teams of peer educators in schools.
Those kids come as ambassadors to take the public round,
whereas before it was more elderly volunteers
that had some time on their hands. They were retired.
So the whole way of running these exhibits has changed.
And that's really was the other premise of
my book that I talked about it around the world,
the impact it was having around
the world in various scenarios,
but also the impact,
particularly on socially deprived communities
where young people have
very little aspiration and
hope and ambition for the future,
what this has left behind with them.
>> So what surprised you most
about the way the exhibit was received
in places that maybe didn't have
a prior relationship to
the story or a huge Jewish community.
>> Like the picture I showed in
the seminar about Kazakhstan,
there's kids in Kazakhstan or Japan or Hong Kong,
which I saw for myself.
I think what surprises me is the diversity
of the connections they have made to their own lives.
So we don't come along and
preach and say this is how you've got to live your life,
you've got to be nice to everyone sort of thing.
What we say is, this is what
happened to this teenage girl.
And let them make the connections,
like I mentioned about the young people in
India making connections to
the iniquities of the caste system.
And so it can do such a different role.
There are some countries still where
they're battling against human rights issues.
I mentioned how careful they have to
be taking that exhibition to Kazakhstan.
And also going some of these nasty countries
in Central and Latin America
where they have to be tread very carefully.
But it's just a diversity of
the young people they're touching.
For example, those kids in Brazil.
They've got a different setup
from perhaps the kids in a township in South Africa,
but they have things in common.
They've been born into difficult circumstances,
but they want to make their lives better.
So the stories that
the job is doing
in so many different countries of the world.
Even in somewhere like the United States,
it can be playing a different role
in some of these very impoverished schools
down in Southern Florida
in Miami around there and that it can
be doing in somewhere like the plains of Iowa,
where there is little diversification of people.
So I think I'll
never stop being interested in how it's being used.
I have to show you that on Friday,
I received this astonishing typed letter,
I don't know if you can see it in front of the camera.
>> Your virtual background
is actually making the letter disappear.
>> I'm going to email it to you.
This incredible letter, which was sent on
to me by my publisher by a young history teacher.
And she poured her heart out to me in
this three-page letter about how
she'd been brought the book
as a Christmas present, my book,
and she read it and brought everything back to her and
how she went on this journey from being a shy,
not very confident teenager,
and the exhibit coming to her school,
she went on as part of
the lessons from Auschwitz program,
she was selected to go to Auschwitz,
which is run by a different organization from ours.
But all the things that have
really taken her along this path,
to becoming a history teacher.
And I'm going to email it
to you because I think you find it interesting.
But it's just one of many stories we've heard.
We've heard from teachers
who say that through that peer education program,
a young people have respected their teachers more.
And it's come from the kids as well,
actually, come to think of it, no,
it came from the kids themselves that they
have felt a greater empathy towards their teachers,
and particularly in some of these schools in rough areas,
where they've been very dismissive of their teachers.
But being peer educators
themselves and having to
keep the attention of their students,
they have understood the challenges that a teacher faces.
But teachers have told us very much like
the letter from this girl that it has
encouraged learning about Anne Frank
and how important her story is and how we live our lives
today has encouraged young people to
consider taking history as
their option later in their school career.
>> That's very inspiring.
It seems like the story
resonates with people in
different ways depending upon where
they're living and what
their personal experiences are or have been.
How do you think that Anne Frank's story has been
reinvented for each new generation?
>> Definitely. And I
think that the work that we were doing,
for example, in the UK in
the early 1990s, very different.
Waves of immigration have changed.
For example, when I first started out,
racism was something that was white on black.
It was very clear cut.
You very rarely saw teenagers in Islamic dress.
It was very rare phenomenon.
You would see Indian people in sarees,
but the hijab is something that's
a phenomenon that's changed
over the years that I was working.
You never saw young girls wearing hijabs.
So cultural identity has changed.
The methods we use to communicate,
of course, has changed.
I remember when I first started out
receiving my first ever fax,
and it was like, my god,
this was the ultimate in technology.
And I had it framed on my wall for many, many years.
So the way we communicate
and the speed we communicate and
the speed that young people want
to receive information has changed.
So, very much things have evolved so much over the years.
The dramatic interpretations of
the way Anne's story is depicted on screen,
I do a lecture called Anne Frank on Film.
And I compare the original George Stevens film
of 1960 to say,
for example, the BBC
production of the Diary of Anne Frank,
which was put together in 2009,
where, for example,
the George Steven Black and White film,
it's very sentimentalized and very
much the deep issues
of being a Jew in the Holocaust were really not explored,
because those were the times.
You wanted to suppress that.
You just wanted to see a wartime heroine.
But now, we deal with
those issues of what it felt like for Anne to be
a Jew and also her sexuality coming to the fore.
So all these issues have very much
evolved and changed certainly
over the 30 years that I've been working.
Society has changed so much.
And probably after the pandemic,
we just don't know what the world is going to look like.
>> So what then do you think it is about her story that
resonates with so many people
and in all of these different circumstances?
>> Because she was a teenager.
She was a young girl that was
transitioning from childhood into adolescence.
And she was going through all the things that girls
and boys are going through those uncertainties,
those wondering, what am I going to do with my life?
Who am I going to be?
Relationships with parents,
relationship with her siblings,
falling in and out of love,
her passions, her concerns for the world.
They just resonate with young people.
But then, of course, the poignancy of
the fact that she couldn't survive.
So although she had hope,
her story isn't one of hope.
But thanks to the beliefs
of her father and the determination of her father.
We've been able to have the hope of that story
of his hope and his hope in
a better future that education come from a better future.
So there's so many layers of
the story and responsibility,
for example, responsibility of the helpers,
would you risk your life?
Would I be the person to risk my life to save others?
These are universal topics.
>> So, you mentioned that you never got to meet
Otto Frank because he passed away in 1980.
>> Eight years before I became involved.
>> But you did have the opportunity to
meet Miep Gies and also to
spend some more time with Otto's stepdaughter.
Can you tell me first about your meeting
with Miep Gies and your impression of her?
>> Do you know something?
I can't remember where I first met her,
but I think it was that picture that I showed in the talk
in the Anne Frank House
because I met her so many times afterward.
And when we've taken over
competition winners and what have you in
those days to Amsterdam,
she would always come and meet with them.
And of course, the highlight
was attending the Academy Awards with her,
which was just something I'll never forget.
Also, I went to her apartment in the early days.
She was lovely and I had lots of letters from her.
She used to send me letters,
and it was just so lovely.
I particularly also remember going
to the BBC with her and
she was like walking around
the corridors because she was going
to record an interview for women's program.
And she was like touching the walls and saying, Julian,
don't you realize this was our lifeline during the war?
So she was an incredible person.
And really to her dying day and she lived to be 100,
she would still sigh and shake her head that she couldn't
save a family and she risked
so much even after the family were arrested.
She risked so much.
She raised money to try and
get them to buy their freedom.
But again, it was wrong timing,
she went into a room
where she shouldn't have been and she was thrown out.
But she tried so hard.
And I think she's
just such an incredible inspiration to all of us.
So that was Miep, spent wonderful times with Miep.
Eva, I still spent a lot of time but not so much in house
I haven't seen her since January, I think.
Yes, so there's a lot about Eva in the book.
She's currently the president of the trust,
and I'm the vice president.
And so she was the
co-founder with me and two other people.
And every time I hear her story,
I've probably heard it about 100 times,
she always brings in something different.
And she has really lived her life,
very much in the shadow of the brother that she
adored and that was so cruelly taken from.
She couldn't believe that this talented young boy,
handsome young boy who was a musician,
he was an artist, he was a poet,
would have had his life taken away.
And she's always lived with that guilt.
>> Can you briefly summarize her story?
I don't know that it's as familiar to folks as Miep's.
>> She was actually Austrian born in Vienna,
and her family after
the Auschwitz escaped first
to Brussels and then to Amsterdam.
And again,
like other German and Austrian Jewish refugees,
they found themselves living in
the Mavedaplain development of apartments.
And she would play with Anne,
but they weren't close buddies
because they were very different in personality.
Eva is admittedly a tomboy,
and she liked to hang out with the boys
and her bicycle and play with the boys.
Anne was very much a flirtatious girl and was fascinated.
Her interests were fashion and Hollywood, etc.
So they weren't the closest of buddies.
But Eva has related
to me in the book her memories of Anne,
and then both families had to go into hiding.
Eva's family was actually
betrayed and they were taken in for
interrogation on her 15th birthday of 11 May 1944.
And Eva spent time in Auschwitz.
She wasn't moved on to Bergen-Belsen.
And very miraculously,
both Eva and her mother survived.
And there are lots of stories. You can read her book.
All about this is incredible because it wasn't
easy for two people to survive together.
And on the journey back to
Amsterdam at a railway
station when the train had stopped,
Eva recognized her friend Anne's father.
And she ran over to him,
and he pressed her for any news of his daughters.
Of course, she didn't have because she was
in Auschwitz, they were in Bergen-Belsen.
And she fleetingly introduced him to her mother.
When the two families were back in Amsterdam,
and they eventually found out
what had happened to Eva's father and brother,
and of course, Otto discovered
what had happened to his two daughters,
they started getting together
and providing each other with comfort and solace.
And Eva still recalls the day that Mr. Frank came to
their apartment with a little brown paper parcel
and it was Anne's diary.
And it had a lovely outcome because,
in 1953, Otto and Elfriede Geiringer,
Eva's mother were married.
So Eva had Mr. Frank as
her stepfather who she absolutely
adored and respected and
he became a grandfather to Eva's three daughters.
Now, Eva never talked about
her experiences until she happened to be at
the opening of the Anne Frank exhibit in London in 1986.
And the then leader of London counsel,
she was sitting next to him at the dinner and he said,
what's your story, and she started telling the story.
And then as all the formal proceedings
were finishing, he said,
excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,
Eva wants to say a few words and she
was absolutely struck dumb.
She'd never even discussed it with
her husband, let alone her children.
And so she stood up and she
started speaking and the whole thing came out.
And to this date, she's never stopped.
So that was 34 years ago,
and she's still at the age of 91,
she's still traveling the world, telling her story.
>> How did she feel about Anne Frank's story
being so well known and so
popular being a survivor and
knowing that
there's quite a diversity of people's experiences?
>> Well, let me tell you that she's admitted that
when she was younger and Otto and her mother were alive,
she got quite jealous of Anne.
Particularly when she was living in London and she had
a miscarriage at one stage
and bringing up three little daughters.
And when she had the miscarriage,
she actually phoned her mother in Switzerland,
said, "Mama, I really need you.
Come and help me look after
the girls I'm feeling really poorly."
And Fritizi said, "Oh, no,
I can't Otto and I are going on a tour of such and such".
So Eva admitted very candidly
that she felt a resentment towards Anne,
because Anne had taken her mother away from her.
But as she matured that
abated and when she talks about Anne,
really and truly,
when she's invited to speak all over the world,
it's not because she's yet any other survivor.
It's because of a close connection to Anne Frank.
So she realizes that,
and she appreciates that,
and it's given her the opportunity
to tell the story of her own brother.
>> And I think that raises a really interesting point,
which is that Anne's story
is something of an entry point for a lot of people.
It's the first holocaust-related story
that many people learn.
>> Yeah.
>> Do you have worked with this material for 30+ years?
Do you have a sense of why that is?
Why Anne Frank's story when there are so many out there?
>> There are so many out there,
but I think it's a combination of the way
that Anne wrote and
articulated her deepest feelings
that young people can so relate to.
But also the combination of circumstances where
Miep rescued the diary and gave it to Otto.
Now, Otto could have made
that decision never to have it published.
Certainly, it was very difficult to get books
published in the post-war Netherlands.
People weren't interested in looking back
and learning about the horrors of the war.
It wanted to move forward.
So it just finding
that publisher and also
it was very difficult even to find
paper to publish the book,
and you'll read the story in my book.
So it was just that perfect storm of
circumstances that things came
together with Miep and Otto
and just the way that Anne wrote and the person she was.
But also one other factor is
because Otto was such a keen photographer,
we have this incredible collection of
photographs of her growing up.
And so young girls particularly can identify with
this girl because sometimes she looks so
contemporary in some of those photographs.
>> I think that is that mixture
of the literary and the visual
and this heroic hiding the helper's story.
There is something there that does seem to resonate,
no matter where your own circumstances
lie on that continuum.
Are you someone who could be a helper or who could
be in danger or is a teenager?
>> The boys also resonate with going into hiding aspect.
They find that very interesting.
>> So, you mentioned that there's a delicacy
to sharing this story
in order to motivate people to do good in the world,
how you define that,
and that there are many ways in which
causes can take so much precedence
that they maybe overshadow the story.
Do you think that there's an
appropriate balance when you're
using history to inspire people to work for human rights?
>> Yes. I do think we've got it right.
I do think that with the peer education program,
we make sure that they know the facts properly,
that no one's going to give out
the wrong facts because it's too important.
You can't have holocaust denials
coming down on you and saying,
well, you're teaching young people lies.
So they have to know the stuff
and have to know the facts before
they can impart the facts.
But this was very much Otto Frank's vision to bring
the story into the contemporary world and
really to tackle all forms
of prejudice and discrimination.
So it wasn't just that he
wanted antisemitism to be explored,
but he wanted all forms
of persecution and discrimination to
be explored through Anne's story.
And so that's very much following
his line and his legacy.
So I think we do get it right.
I mentioned to you that one of the reasons that I
came on board as the British coordinator,
all those years ago was to ensure that
the exhibition wasn't hijacked,
and Anne's story isn't hijacked for
diverse political causes and dissipated.
>> So, is there anything I haven't asked you about,
that you would want to make sure that you
share about your experiences working
with Anne's story and
multiple diverse communities around the world?
>> Nothing I can think of at the moment.
I'm going to send you the letter so you can see,
and this is one of many that we received.
And we've actually also just going
on following on from what I was saying before,
is that the Anne Frank Trust
actually commissioned about four years ago.
The Department of Social Psychology in
the university carried out an exploration on
proper evaluation of the impact of both on
the peer educators and
the young people that the peers that
they were giving the story
to and how it made them look at
issues of prejudice and discrimination
and also how it made the peer educators,
how it impacted their life
and gave them a sense of leadership
and communication and confidence
above all that they can tackle issues.
It went back. They went back to renew it a year ago,
published at the House of Commons
actually in Parliament a year ago.
And some of the people they
interviewed were those that they had interviewed
three years previous and
how it was still impacting on their lives.
And the results were quite remarkable
in this very fast-moving world where there were
so many influences that three years on,
these young people were still talking about
the impact it had on their lives.
And you can read that letter as well.
>> Oh, that's wonderful and one thing I
realized that I heard was curious whether you knew,
do they still do these international conferences
at the Anne Frank House with young people?
>> They do. Yes. Bringing Anne Frank ambassadors
from all around the world. Yes, they do.
Our ambassadors in the UK tend
to be high school students.
So they tend to be aged about 13, 14, 15,
because of the curriculum demands of getting them
out their classrooms when they start getting older.
But the Anne Frank House tends to
work with older ambassadors,
late teens and early 20s.
But they certainly do hold them, and of course,
nothing this year but hopefully
next year they can resume that.
>> That's very funny. Is English,
do you think that that's the language that is
still most common for everybody who's involved in this?
I know it's been translated
into hundreds of languages, I think at this point.
>> Well over 70.
I'm not quite sure exactly
what the number is at the moment,
but I always say it's over 70 because when I was working,
it was over 70, I'm sure it's many more now.
When we all get together, for example,
at the Anne Frank House for our meetings and conferences,
no one ever speaks Dutch.
It's all English, and English is the universal language.
But it's just phenomenal to see
the different languages that's being translated in.
>> And I'm assuming that some of these cases,
the ambassadors, the peer educators,
if the exhibit comes to another bell
speak in whatever language, they're most comfortable.
>> Absolutely.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, because we're not talking about,
as well as the book, the exhibit
will have gone in their language.
So, this is why,
you know, for every place, there's different languages.
So there'll be Chinese versions and Russian versions and
Polish versions and Spanish versions and whatever.
So they will be
guiding their docenting in their own language,
even Kazakhstan.
So great.
>> Well, thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
>> I've just got a couple of things for you.
I'm going to send Mick's letter.
The Anne Frank translation exhibit is going to
be at the museum for about a year whenever there is.
But do you have plans to tour it?
>> We do. Currently,
I think we have about 20 different traveling exhibits
that are this quick screen,
very portable style that we travel for free as long as.
>> Do you send them all over the country?
>> We do. And Generally,
if we can get it to you,
if it's within our I think it's like a 50 mile radius.
It's completely no cost to
any other library or school or institution.
Otherwise, you only pay shipping.
So we've had, we
have a Japanese internment exhibit, for example,
that's been very popular on the West Coast
in Seattle and other parts of Washington State,
and that's just that they'll pay to ship it.
And we've had immigration exhibit
that's gone to New York and that kind of thing.
So they pay shipping. But beyond that,
there's no cost associated with that.
>> Because you have generic sponsors of the museum.
>> We are part of the university.
So actually we have a combination actually of
being a unit within Kennesaw State University,
which is University System of Georgia state institution.
We also get a fair amount of grant funding
from local family charities,
the Marcus Foundation, which does a lot with
the Holocaust Education writ large.
They pay for educators on
our staff who go into schools and develop programs.
So yeah.
And everyone's looking for grants nowadays.
>> Is that funded by
the university or by the actual museum?
>> Our museum is a unit within the university.
>> Yeah, so it's the University of Kennesaw.
>> Yeah.
>> So I would like to hook you up with Dora Stevick at
the University of South Carolina
because he'd be fascinated by what you're doing,
and more of the Anne Frank Center programs
and exhibits are finding
their way down to his department.
>> Fascinating.
>> So I think you should be perhaps working together.
If I can be of any help at all, just let me know.
>> Thank you. Because I've had,
30 old years of touring exhibits.
And I think possibly you will
maybe need to be in touch with the Anne Frank house.
But Doyle can be a very good conduit with that,
you should work very closely.
>> And with the Anne Frank Center in the United States.
>> Of course. Yes. Well, I work with them too.
>> Absolutely. I think that's great.
So anything else I want to ask you?
I don't think so I think that's about it.
I think it's been fantastic
and keep me posted, as they say.
Have you got any of the panels
sort of designed and produced yet?
>> Not yet. We have a preliminary design,
colors, and ideas.
But I've been in this stage,
trying to conceptualize it as
a combination of the subject matter,
which I find really interesting,
which is this legacy story,
why is Anne Frank so well known,
what processes made that possible?
The combination of the saving of the diary,
the publication, the translation,
the creation of Anne Frank House and these exhibits,
and then also these performance pieces,
the play and the film and then the television dramas.
So people's encounters with Anne Frank
differ depending on where they
fell within that chronology.
But I'm also trying to think of this
as something that might
resonate with young people in terms
of how do you leave a legacy?
Are you writing something,
what your observations of the world,
the connections that you make.
So some of the exhibits we produce,
it's really easy to nail down the audience.
This one, I'm having maybe
slightly harder time just trying to think
about because it'll open a university,
but we want it to be of interest to
our usual school audience as well.
>> Of course.
>> Which tends to be more
like fifth grade through middle school.
>> I've been in the exhibit reading
and writing with Anne Frank.
It's quite a small exhibit.
>> I saw that that was listed among the offerings.
I haven't seen it myself.
So I saw it was listed on the Anne Frank House.
>> It can be set up in a small library.
>> I would really like to see that one.
>> And the other thing is, I was going to ask you,
I'm doing a course of five lectures
for context now starting on the 19th.
I don't know if you've signed up for that one.
>> I have not.
>> But please do promote that to your colleagues
because it's five one hour lectures
and I go into all aspects of Anne's life.
Before they went into hiding during hiding,
the helpers and the other people in hiding.
Then what happened after the arrest and
the betrayal leading to
the Anne Frank House and its programs.
And then the final one is the tour of
Anne Franks Amsterdam through her eyes.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> That starts, one a week starting from August 19.
So if you could help us promote that.
>> Absolutely. I will make sure
that our contacts know about that.
So thank you again. I realize
I hadn't stopped the recording.
So I'm going to do that now.