HISTORY’S LESSONS
At the Anne Frank exhibit in Toronto, the well-known story has a relevant message for students,
“This is still relevant now; discrimination still exists and there’s more of an impact through the words of students.”
The story of Anne Frank may be one we all know, but it is also one that must be remembered, says Emma Da Silva, a 17-year-old student at Toronto’s John Polanyi Collegiate — and one of the senior students trained to be a guide, working alongside two teachers, for an exhibit now showing at her school to mark Jewish Heritage Month.
The Toronto District School Board secured the travelling exhibit — called Anne Frank: A History for Today — which 2,300 students from across the city will visit on class trips. It will also be open to the public, free of charge, two Sundays in May.
“It’s intense,” Da Silva says of the exhibit, which includes a video and 37 information panels with photos and details about the situation in Germany and Europe around the Second World War, the Holocaust and Anne’s life and death.
There’s a picture of her parents’ wedding party, from 1925, and a young Anne sitting in her classroom at school 10 years later.
Also on display is a replica of her famous diary, as well as actual examples of Nazi propaganda, a 3-D replica of the secret annex where she and her family hid and pieces from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam are also on loan.
Shari Schwartz-Maltz, the board’s media relations manager who chaired the heritage month committee, said they wanted something that would have a real impact given what’s going on around the world today.
“It was the little girl tweeting from Syria” that got her thinking about Anne’s story, said Schwartz-Maltz, referring to Bana Alabed, the 7-yearold who has been sending live updates on social media about the war in Aleppo.
“There are things happening today that happened more than 70 years ago. . . . If we don’t understand them, they can be repeated again.” AIMAN FLAHAT JOHN POLANYI PRINCIPAL
“They were both hiding from hate,” Schwartz-Maltz said. “It’s the same story . . . and the only way forward is to teach kids the consequences of hate.”
Sometimes schools here have to deal with racist or anti-Semitic graffiti — “it’s there and it bothers us,” she added.
John Polanyi principal Aiman Fla- hat said the community around the school seems to be divided north and south of Lawrence Ave. W. — but the school itself is very diverse, with students from more than 60 countries “learning tolerance and acceptance.”
“There are things happening today that happened more than 70 years ago,” he said of world events. “If we don’t understand them, they can be repeated again.”
In York Region, a public elementary school was named in Anne Frank’s honour when it opened in 2014, and it hosted a similar exhibit this year. Being an Anne Frank school “comes with very specific responsibilities — sharing Anne’s message of hope, and education, to bring about the ideas of acceptance and diversity,” said principal Aneta Fishman.
About 1,000 students, as well as members of the public, went through their exhibit.
“We had Holocaust survivors or those with family members who had perished in the Holocaust,” she said, as well as new immigrants whose relatives had died in conflicts in their homeland.
“It went beyond being the story of Anne,” said Fishman. “It became everyone’s story.”
In Toronto, Veterans Affairs Canada contributed to the exhibit and the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation is donating a copy of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl to every student who attends with their class.
The exhibit at John Polanyi is open to the public on Sunday and May 28, from 9 to 5 p.m.