Anne Frank in te reo
Anne Frank never hid how she felt about anything, and that’s pretty much a Ma¯ori approach to life, says the translator of her diary into te reo for the first time. Bess Manson reports.
Parihaka felt like the right place to speak about discrimination. That’s what Dutch businessman Boyd Klap reckoned.
His visit in 2017 to the settlement that symbolises peaceful resistance was to talk about Ma¯ ori involvement in the Anne Frank travelling exhibition, to show the parallels between discrimination during World War II and that which Ma¯ ori faced in colonisation.
At question time during that Parihaka visit, after his talk at a marae there, one woman asked if Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl had ever been translated into te reo Ma¯ ori.
The story of Anne and her family, who were hidden in an annexe of an office building in Amsterdam by non-Jewish friends for three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, has been translated into more than 70 languages and published in 60 countries.
But translated into te reo? Klap didn’t know.
So began his next project for the diary, which has been the subject of two exhibitions, both accompanied by a focus on discrimination in the modern world.
The story of Anne Frank is more relevant today than it was when it was first published in 1947, says Klap, a 92-year-old dairy farmer turned insurance executive and director. ‘‘Discrimination has always been a part of our lives, but we have never realised what it can lead to.
‘‘The Christchurch Muslim attacks were an extreme example of discrimination. I believe that people are talking about what sort of country we want to be, how we need to be accepting of minorities. New Zealand has been pretty good, but not all that good on that front.’’
Klap was himself discriminated against as a young Dutchman in 1950s New Zealand.
‘‘The message coming out of Anne Frank is very strong. It starts with accepting other cultures and other people, sexual orientation, colour.’’
The question of a te reo translation stuck with Klap so, back in Wellington, he contacted the Anne Frank Estate in Basel, Switzerland. It was surprised that ‘‘at the end of the world’’ someone was interested in translating it into another language.
And no, it had never been published in te reo. Now Klap had the bit between his teeth.
He reckoned on $100,000 to complete the project and rationalised it should be supported by the Dutch and Jewish communities, Ma¯ ori and New Zealand local government.
His background in business and his talent for raising cash led him to the Dutch Rabobank, Sir David Leven, the Ma¯ ori Language Commission and Wellington City Council (with the Wellington Community Trust). All four injected $25,000 into the project, to lift it off the ground.
Raising money is hard yakka mired in many disappointments, says Klap. He had organisations that promised $50,000 but ended up giving nothing.
But the real star of this story, he says, is the translator, Te Haumihiata Mason.
TRANSMITTING THE VOICE
A smile spreads across Mason’s face as she picks up The Diary of Anne Frank.
Sitting in the office at the edge of her suburban Rotorua home, Mason (Nga¯ i Tu¯ hoe) says Anne’s desire to be utterly truthful in her diary spoke to her.
‘‘She’s funny, she’s clever, she doesn’t hide anything. She never hid her emotions or how she felt about everything, and that’s pretty much a Ma¯ ori approach to life.
‘‘That’s what I loved about this girl.
‘‘I was interested in the voice of this girl in the 1940s – I was a young girl in the 1950s and it gave me the opportunity to write the te reo Ma¯ ori of that day in the voice of a young Ma¯ ori girl back then. It’s the voice of my own childhood.
‘‘So I go back to my own childhood to keep that voice honest. I thought what a perfect opportunity to transmit that voice of that place and that time.’’
Mason grew up in an isolated Ma¯ ori community in Te Urewera where only te reo was spoken.
While in many ways Anne Frank’s situation was vastly different to Mason’s, there were elements of Anne’s life that took her back to her own childhood. The scarcity of food at times was not uncommon to Mason, growing up living off the land.
And she was all too familiar with discrimination.
Aged 9, when the family moved to Whakata¯ ne, she didn’t speak a word of English and was mercilessly mocked at school, where te reo was forbidden. They were strapped for speaking their own language.
‘‘We were laughed at and mocked. We were called ‘those dumb Ma¯ oris’ from Ruatoki.’’
In the past she has brought translated stories into a Ma¯ ori world view, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which meant untangling the Shakespearean meaning and replacing it with a Ma¯ ori equivalent.
Her hope with Te Ra¯ taka a Te¯tahi Ko¯hine – due to be published on June 15 – has always been to try to retain a little of the simplicity of the language which continues to develop, incorporating new words from a modern world.
‘‘I’m trying to retain and capture a simple Ma¯ ori language that came directly from the environment that involved the earth and the sky.
‘‘All the signs for fishing, planting – everything came from the moon that hung up in the sky, waxing and waning. We pretty much lived at one with our environment. I’m not sure too many people do that today.’’
SPREADING THE MESSAGE
The translation of the book was underwritten by the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, which will market the publication once it’s launched at Te Papa in June.
David Zwartz, a supporter of Holocaust education, was Klap’s righthand man, using his publishing background to negotiate with the editor, translator and other contributors.
The project is a major event for students of te reo, to have a classic work available in their language, and for the Holocaust Centre to be able to extend its
education programme to a new group of people, particularly teenagers, says Zwartz. The fact that 2019 is Unesco’s International Year of Indigenous Languages makes it particularly good timing for the translation.
The translation of Anne Frank’s diary comes at a time when discrimination has reared its ugly head both close to home and around the world.
As the events of the Holocaust grow more distant in terms of time, it becomes more important that succeeding generations understand what happened and the effects it had, to help prevent the same sort of thing happening again – and the Anne Frank diary is a wonderfully personal story that carries this message, says Zwartz.
‘‘Unfortunately, there is an increase in anti-Semitism around the world and the Holocaust Centre hopes the publication of the translation will help combat this through Anne Frank’s story.’’
DISCRIMINATION IN ITS MOST BRUTAL FORM
Boyd Klap was 13 when war broke out in 1940, and 18 when the Netherlands was liberated.
They were tough years: food was scarce, but the emotional scars came from seeing Jewish neighbours sent to the camps, never to return, says Klap, who was raised with four siblings in
the eastern city of Deventer.
He became a courier for the Dutch Underground movement, carrying messages and maps of German military movements hidden in his bicycle seat.
He doesn’t recall being scared. ‘‘I couldn’t care less. I didn’t want to die old. I wanted to enjoy life.’’
But he is an old man now, at 92 – though you wouldn’t guess it.
He recalls riding atop a Canadian Army tank when the Allies arrived, to guide the troops to German military points.
His family took in other families bombed out of their homes. They themselves had their roof blown off.
‘‘We had so many attacks that our windows got smaller and smaller as we repaired them, until there was almost no glass left.’’
Klap, who moved to New Zealand in the 1950s, remembers air raids, the bodies lying in bombed-out front rooms, the disappearance of Jewish neighbours. His wife Ria’s family hid a German Jew during those years.
This is what happens when discrimination is left to grow and fester, he says. ‘‘If you look at antiSemitism, it started at a level that is individual and personal, but slowly it became part of [government] policy and ultimately it became the policy of destroying a whole race.
‘‘ It started at the bottom and worked its way up. Remember Hitler was voted in by 80 per cent of the people.’’
Klap hopes the translation of Anne Frank’s diary will lead not only to more people in Aotearoa/ New Zealand learning te reo Ma¯ ori, but to a greater awareness of the dangers that lurk in discrimination. ‘‘Our society has changed and there is a greater acceptance of minorities, but there’s a long way to go.
‘‘We need to start with young people in schools. We are one of the worst in the OECD countries for bullying, and that is the start of discrimination – looking down on someone who is different.’’
Anne Frank would have been 90 this year. She had wanted more than anything to be a writer, a mother. Her death in BergenBelsen concentration camp at 15 ended those hopes. What might she have achieved had she lived, wonders Klap.
What might all of those millions of souls who perished have gone on to do had their lives not been snuffed out by hate and discrimination?
‘‘Our society has changed and there is a greater acceptance of minorities, but there’s a long way to go.’’
Boyd Klap