BRATTLEBORO-When Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS) social studies teacher Lindsay Levesque was about 12 or 13, she read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
It was her introduction to the Holocaust.
“I remember talking to my dad about it,” she recalls. “My other Holocaust connection is that my mom’s best friend is an immigrant from Hungary whose mother was a Holocaust survivor.”
Levesque jumped at the idea of bringing the exhibit “Anne Frank: A History for Today” to BUHS, where the school community can see it from Friday, April 10, to Wednesday, April 29.
The exhibit is on loan from the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina. It was developed to introduce 11-to-18-year-old students to the life of Frank, a German Jewish girl whose family had fled to Amsterdam in 1933, almost immediately after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and measures to persecute Jews in Germany.
“Her family had to escape their home in Germany because of discrimination, and they thought they found safety in the Netherlands until the German war and takeover of Netherlands, and they are forced into hiding,” Levesque says.
In 1942, Frank, her family, and the others hid from Nazis along with four other German refugees in an attic for two years until they were captured. Throughout the ordeal, Frank, who dreamed of being a journalist, wrote in her diary, chronicling the day-to-day survival through the eyes of an adolescent girl.
They were eventually sent to Auschwitz, where Anne Frank died of typhus.
Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust. His secretary had kept Anne’s diary safe and gave it to Otto after his liberation.
Anne Frank’s diary was published in 1947. “For many, Anne Frank has become a symbol of the Holocaust: the systematic murder of six million human beings,” one panel in the exhibit says.
Antisemitism rises as memories of Holocaust dim
Two other Vermont high schools have hosted this exhibit so far this year: Bellows Free Academy in Fairfax and Mill River Union High School in Clarendon. Though the exhibit is primarily meant for students, each school hosts a community night for members of the public.
According to publicity materials, knowledge of the Holocaust and Nazi death camps has plummeted in recent years and acts of antisemitism have increased dramatically, especially in Vermont, where the Anti-Defamation League says the number of reported instances of harassment, vandalism, and assault went from six to 43 in a year’s time — the second-highest increase of antisemitism and hate crimes per capita in the country.
Thirty states now mandate Holocaust and genocide studies in K-12 schools, but Vermont is not one of them yet. A bill was introduced in the Legislature but will likely die in committee this biennium.
Using 32 museum-quality vinyl display panels, “Anne Frank: A History for Today” recounts the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of the Frank family during their years of hiding.
“Prejudice and discrimination still exist today and people have to leave their homes because of prejudice and discrimination all over the world because of religion, sexual orientation, or race, because of the way they identify,” Levesque says, noting the enduring relevance of Frank’s story.
As part of the agreement for hosting the exhibit, “our students are trained as tour guides, and they are the ones who will give tours,” Levesque says. “There will be 19 students — 11th and 12th graders — who will be trained on April 8 and 9. The Anne Frank Center sends two people to train them.”
One of these students, Maeve Bald, 18, of Brattleboro, a senior, says she is looking forward to being a guide to the exhibit “so in the future nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“I think it’s so important that survivor’s stories are told and our current population needs to be educated on this horrific genocide,” Bald says. “Unfortunately, a lot of the survivors will not be around much longer because of their age. We need to learn from history so it doesn’t repeat itself.”
‘Even in little pieces you can help’
Levesque’s path to the classroom included courses at Keene State College, where she majored in history and “took a variety of courses on the Holocaust,” she says.
She has an advanced degree from Gratz College in Holocaust and genocide studies, and she teaches an elective course on the topic.
Levesque wants to thank the Vermont Holocaust Memorial, which helped fund costs for shipping the exhibit and training the student docents. “They are the ones who contacted me and asked if I was interested in bringing it to BUHS. I wouldn’t have done it without them initiating that,” she said.
Levesque calls Otto Frank’s survival “an important piece of the story.”
“That story of help and support and support systems is really important,” she says. “That is a message for us today. Even in little pieces you can help. There were so many people that helped procure food and items they needed. That was a system of rescue.”
Levesque tears up as she says, “Look at Anne when she was young, the friends she had, the relationship she had with her sister. The school she attended. It’s so important to understand who she was as a whole person and not just a victim.
“That’s what strikes me,” she continues. “It’s about the humanity.”
The importance in teaching the greatest inhumanity is to focus on the humanity, Levesque says. “That’s how we move forward and prevent this from happening again.”
* * *
The public is invited to Community Night on Tuesday, April 14, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. to see the exhibit.
The evening begins with a reception at Brattleboro Area Middle School’s multipurpose room, 109 Sunny Acres, at 6:30 p.m. The student-led tour takes place in the BUHS Multipurpose room.
For more information, email Lindsay Levesque at BUHS at llevesque@wsesdvt.org.
This News item by Victoria Chertok was written for The Commons.