Anne Frank the Exhibition, opening on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in New York, features a significant photograph of Anne and her classmates. This multimedia installation re-creates the secret annex where Anne wrote her diary while hiding from the Nazis. A heart-wrenching moment occurs when an animation of the kindergarten photo shows the disappearance of Jewish children, accompanied by their names and ages at death, highlighting their tragic fates. Ronald Leopold emphasizes the personal impact of the exhibit, making the historical loss tangible and intimate for visitors.
Visitors first see the picture in one of the exhibition's introductory rooms, before they walk through the show's core: the first full-scale re-creation of the secret annex that was the Amsterdam hiding place of eight Jews, including the Frank family, from July 1942 to August 1944.
When viewers encounter the kindergarten photograph again, this time as an animation, it delivers a gutting blow: As an audio track reveals their names, their ages at death and the places where they were killed, 10 of the classroom's Jewish children, one by one, turn into black silhouettes and disappear from the picture.
This animation introduces a very personal, intimate, heartbreaking element of schoolchildren who were murdered for no other reason than the fact that they were Jewish, said Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House.
The exhibition opens on International Holocaust Remembrance Day for a three-month stay at the Center for Jewish History in New York before traveling to other cities.
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