Frank look at the past
Arjan van der Boon tells Greer Berry what the story of Anne Frank means to the Dutch immigrants who have quietly embedded themselves in New Zealand culture.
Arjan van der Boon is passionate about shining a light on people he calls the invisible immigrants.
It is a cultural group he says is missing from the pages of New Zealand history. Forgotten. Ignored. Denied. ‘‘We are an untold story. We thought we would tell that story,’’ he says.
‘‘We put ourselves back on the pages of history. We were missing.’’
There are lots of stories that involve the Dutch but one key one involving a teen girl – Anne Frank – is hard to go past given it defines a tragic period within a country’s history.
Her story, as part of an exhibition, has now found a new temporary home in the place van der Boon helped create, the home of Dutch culture and heritage in New Zealand.
Van der Boon arrived in New Zealand more than 30 years ago and for more than 10 years he has been involved with the creation of New Zealand’s national Dutch museum, Oranjehof Dutch Connection Centre in Foxton.
The Dutch, who arrived in New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, were told to integrate once reaching New Zealand shores, told to not speak their native language any more, van der Boon says.
‘‘But at one stage, 4 per cent of the population, or one in every 25, was Dutch or of Dutch descent.’’
Van der Boon says the stories of his homeland are important to the New Zealand story.
After all, it is the Dutch who helped give this country its love of cheese, coffee shops, wine with meals, dairy cows, roast chicken on Sundays, salami and even the humble loaf of Vogels.
‘‘Vogels bread is Dutch,’’ van der Boon says, laughing.
‘‘We had quite an influence.’’ Dutch people have stories and the museum has quickly become a home for them alongside more local stories from New Zealand history.
‘‘For the Dutchies, it is about connecting back to where we came from and the stories from home and understanding a bit better about who we are and why we are the way we are.’’
Central to some of these stories is the thread of World War II and the occupation of the Netherlands by German forces.
Van der Boon grew up with family sharing memories about what life was like during those years. ‘‘My mother used to tell me about the Jewish people who disappeared from our town.’’ They never did come home. In total, about 250,000 Dutch people died – one in every 40 people. Van der Boon recalls that of those, more than 100,000 Jews who were deported never returned from the death camps.
‘‘When I was in primary school, I was told about the diary of Anne Frank ... she is much beloved in the Netherlands.’’
Although she only arrived in the Netherlands when she was 5, Frank wrote in Dutch and she was helped by the Dutch, van der Boon says.
‘‘The Dutch just see her, much like I see myself as a Kiwi, she considered herself Dutch. To us, it is about her story.’’
For a few months now, van der Boon has been a part of a team working to bring one of the most recognisable stories from that era to Horowhenua – the story of Anne Frank.
From the pages of one of the world’s most-read books to the walls of the gallery in Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom in Foxton, Let Me Be Myself is an exhibition van der Boon says has withstood the test of time.
Created by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the exhibition has already visited
80 countries and has been seen by more than 10 million people globally.
Anne’s The Diary of a Young
Girl captured the world’s attention through her real-life experiences as a young girl in hiding with her family from the Nazis, in an Amsterdam attic.
The book has proven to be a fundamental learning text for teens around the world, including many in New Zealand and the Netherlands, where it was taught in schools.
It is fair to say most New Zealanders can recall having an experience with the book, whether through compulsory study in school or discovering it in other ways.
The famous book has also recently been translated into Ma¯ ori by Te Haumihiata Mason: Te
Ra¯ taka a Te¯tahi Ko¯hine, and will be available at the exhibition.
At the launch of the book, Mason addressed Anne Frank directly: ‘‘Your honesty and the hardships you experienced guided my translation of your diary. You died young but your words have lived on and will forever continue to inspire the world.’’
Van der Boon credits Boyd Klap, the person responsible for bringing the exhibition to New Zealand in the first place, for pursuing the translation of the diary for a uniquely New Zealand location.
Now aged 92, Klap has played a central role in raising awareness of the Holocaust, often by using his own experience as a teen who lived through German-occupied times.
Speaking of the exhibition in Foxton, Klap says that despite being a part of 35 exhibition openings now, he remains haunted.
‘‘I am still horrified that
1.5 million children were murdered. How can you hurt a child, kill a child and do that 1.5 million times?’’
At the opening on Thursday night, Klap shared a story of the Godschalk family and little Heiman who never came back.
‘‘They probably were murdered in the gas chambers,’’ he says, matter of factly.
‘‘My girlfriend Ria, later my wife, lost her de facto dad when he was tortured, recovered in hospital and was then executed.
‘‘My wife’s neighbours were also Jews. When they flushed the toilet during the day, traitors reported that and the whole family was arrested.’’ None of the neighbours survived the war.
This latest exhibition arrived in New Zealand last year and opened at the Auckland War Memorial Museum in January, where it was seen by more than 35,000 visitors in three months.
Klap says more than 25,000 school children nationally have visited the various exhibition locations.
It features excerpts from Anne’s famous teenage diary, artefacts such as the yellow star of David Jews were forced to wear, photos, examples of propaganda, video and other historical items.
Van de Boon says that despite the decades that have passed since the end of World War II, the themes of the 1940s around disability, sexuality, otherness, racism and prejudice, are just as fitting today.
‘‘We want to make the story come alive. It is still relevant today.’’
The exhibition aims to challenge visitors to examine their core moral values.
‘‘It is emotional. It is inspirational. It is very important,’’ says van der Boon.
School groups will be utilising the exhibition as a learning experience, with some students being trained up as ‘‘peer guides’’.
‘‘Students learn to tour the other students around the exhibition.
‘‘It means they are involved with their peers rather than by the old man like me,’’ he says, laughing.
The main message van der Boon wants visitors to take away is a resolve that the horrors witnessed by Anne Frank are never repeated.
The exhibition opened yesterday and runs until March.