Anne Frank exhibition opened in Durban

The Durban Holocaust Centre has opened the first ever permanent exhibition of Anne Frank’s room.
With exactly the same wallpaper, table and pictures, the room is a replica of the room that Anne slept in while in hiding in Amsterdam during World War Two.
It opened last night and it’s housed at the Durban Holocaust Centre in Old Fort Road.
The Director of the International Department at the Anne Frank House Jan-Eric Dubbelman says the room will not just be a tourist attraction, but will serve an educational purpose too.
“You can learn about the Holocaust; you can learn the facts; you can reconstruct a history on how it went about and you need to know those facts to understand the story of Anne Frank.
“But then when you learn about the story of one individual family and you go into the room, you also learn with the heart. You feel what it must have been like. So for us it’s a way to communicate the experience of being in hiding by creating that room.”Mary Kluk, President of The Council of KwaZulu-Natal Jewry, explains, “Eighteen months ago we began to correspond with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam to discuss the possibility of creating our own small Anne Frank area. After much communication and with a great deal of help from Jan-Eric Dubbelman… we have achieved something very special.”
“Anne Frank represents one of the one and a half million children who died during the Holocaust. Many learners across the world know of Anne and her amazing story and we at the Durban Holocaust Centre chose to feature this story in the hope that her amazing outlook on life, told through her diary, will be an inspiration to learners throughout our province,” said Kluk.
The Durban Holocaust Centre, which opened in March this year, focuses on educating learners and the general public about the Holocaust, other human rights abuses and contemporary genocide.
With the inclusion of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in the National Schools Curriculum of South Africa for the first time in 2007, it meant that there was a great need for information and resources.
The Centre therefore provides curriculum support material and daily school group tours for learners in KwaZulu-Natal.