If you guys have not gone, there is still one day left! It is really neat to know the personal history behind Anne Frank....if your a history buff...you will enjoy the WEALTH of information that is there!

ANNE FRANK
 
  A HISTORY FOR TODAY
Shows April 13 -- May 11, 2010
This FREE National Exhibit opens at the Salt Lake City Public Library (210 East 400 South adjacent to TRAX stop).

The Anne Frank: A History for Today exhibition exposes visitors to the events leading up to WWII, and the government-directed killing of Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, Slavs, and others. It also depicts individuals who chose to join the Nazi party and become perpetrators as well as those who were bystanders and those willing to resist Nazi tyranny. The exhibit includes photographs of the Frank family and the other occupants of the Secret Annex and shows how people were persecuted by political decisions and by the actions of individuals. Visitors are challenged to look for ways to resolve differences without violence and to learn about human rights laws and standards as defined by documents such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on the Rights of Children.
 
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Anne Frank, a happy 13-year-old girl.

The Jews were told to wear these yellow stars sewn to their clothes so people could tell who they were. Then, even if they were little children, people in the towns had permission to spit on them, trip them in the mud, push them down, kick them out of school. The Jews weren't allowed in restaurants, or public bathrooms, or movies, even though they were some of the most successful families in the neighborhoods. It became stylish to hate Jews. So almost everybody did.

When Anne turned thirteen she got a red-plaid diary for her birthday. She wrote in it that first day, and named it "Kitty."

"I hope I will be able to confide everything in you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support."
This is the first entry in Anne Frank's diary, June 12, 1942 . She wanted to tell her new best-friend Kitty everything in her heart, even the stuff she couldn't tell her sister Margo, or her parents. She started writing in it every single day. Pretty soon it was all filled up, so she got new diaries. They were her pride and joy. She said she didn't feel scared when she was writing.

Anne had lots of reason to be scared. Her sister Margo was only sixteen, but the soldiers were coming to take her away to a work camp (it was really a concentration camp where they killed Jews.) Anne's parents took their girls to some hidden rooms above the dad's office in this blue building. They had to be perfectly quiet when the workers were there all day, and at night their friends brought them food and library books.

They thought it would only be for a couple of weeks but they stayed there a long time. Pretty soon, another family came, and then a man who was a dentist joined them in hiding. They had to stay there for two whole years, never going outside, always with the same people.

Anne wrote it all down in her dairy. She dreamed of having it published some day.



On a hidden radio they heard the news that the British and American armies were coming to save them soon. Every day they got more and more excited. Anne actually re-wrote her diaries so she could take them to a book-company and turn them into real books when she got out.

One horrible day, August 1, 1944, the Nazi soldiers discovered the family's hiding place in Amsterdam. The eight people who had hidden for two years were all arrested and sent to concentration camps all over Europe. Anne left her diaries in their hiding place.

The saddest part of the story is that they all died in the concentration camps. Anne, and her sister, her mother, their friends . . . all but Anne's father. After the war he went back to their hiding place and found Anne's diaries and read them. He remembered that she'd wanted to get them published so people would know what it was like to be Jewish during World War II, when Hitler and his armies were terrorizing and killing millions of Jews.

Anne's father, Otto, took the diaries to several publishing companies who all said "No." They thought a thirteen-year-old girl's diaries would be silly and unimportant. Finally, someone read one. He said, "This is an extraordinary document of the human spirit."
In her second-to-last entry she wrote,

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

This exhibit is worth seeing! Don't go without your tissues though...