Duration: 2 April - 8 May 2011
Opening: 5.30pm Friday 1 April 2011
Holocaust stories come to Whakatane District Museum & Gallery
If there is one name that has come to symbolise the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust, it is Anne Frank.
Such is the enduring impact of her story that more than one million people visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam last year. For anyone who has not had that opportunity, the travelling exhibition “Anne Frank – A History for Today” (at the Whakatane Museum and Gallery from April 2 till May 8) is an unmissable experience.
The Museum’s Coordinator Arts & Culture Projects says Anne Frank – A History for Today is a very challenging and moving exhibition.
“To be the only Bay of Plenty venue for this important international exhibition’s tour is an absolute privilege and we’re expecting record attendances over its five weeks with us,” Kay Boreham says. “Through a partnership with Eastbay REAP, we’re aiming to bring as many young people as possible to the exhibition, but as the public response in other centres has shown, the Anne Frank story speaks to everyone and we welcome anyone interested to the opening at 5.30pm on Friday 1 April.”
“We’re also taking the opportunity to mark ANZAC Day by including a small display of WWI & WWII objects from our collection.”
The core exhibition tells the story of Anne Frank and her family in the context of world events before, during and after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Photographs of the Frank family, and the others who hid with them in a secret annex in Otto Frank’s Amsterdam factory, vividly portray the human effects of extreme political persecution. The related themes of bullying, anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide are explored, while the stories of those who chose to join the Nazi party and become perpetrators, those who were bystanders, and those who were willing to resist the Nazis, help to provide an understanding of how and why the Holocaust happened.
By the end of World War II in 1945, Nazi Germany’s ethnic cleansing had exterminated an estimated seven million people, most of whom were Jews. More than one million Jewish children died and amongst them was Anne Frank. The diary she kept during the years she and her family spent in hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland - prior to their betrayal, arrest and incarceration in concentration camps - is a compelling insight into a period in history which will forever be a stain on the fabric of humanity. First published in 1947, Anne Frank’s Diary has been translated into more than 60 languages and read by hundreds of millions.
The Whakatane Museum and Gallery is open from 10.00am till 4.30pm, Monday to Friday, and from 11.00am till 3.00pm on weekends. The Museum is closed on Good Friday and is open restricted hours – from 1.00pm – 4.00pm on Anzac Day, 25 April.
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