The Anne Frank Museum in Lviv

The exhibition from the Anne Frank Museum (Holland) features 67 panels with printed photo images on them. Eight of them were prepared by the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and portray the fate that befell Jewish children in Ukraine. The remaining panels portraying the life of little Anne were created especially for Ukraine (with inscriptions in Russian and Ukrainian) in the Netherlands, which is home to the Anne Frank Museum. “The exhibition envisions a whole number of projects. In every city it is preceded by a seminar for history teachers. Also, eighteen Lviv schoolchildren work as exhibition guides,” says Yuliya Smilianska, a representative of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies.

“Such exhibitions are helping us to break the silence imposed by the Soviet leadership,” said Rudolf Mirsky, professor and president of the International Holocaust Center named in honor of Dr. Alexander Schwarz, at the opening of the exhibition.

The Anne Frank Museum exhibition, entitled “A History Lesson,” is being held as part of the Lessons in Tolerance international project and is open until December 8. The exhibition is funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sports of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

This mobile exhibition has already toured Germany, Poland, and the Baltic republics, and arrived in Ukraine two years ago. Its itinerary includes thirteen Ukrainian cities. Lviv is the eleventh city to host the exhibition.

Anne Frank was born in Germany. In 1933 her family escaped from the Nazis to the Netherlands. Between 1942 and 1944 the Frank family lived in a hideout, during which time the girl kept her diary. Two years later the fascists discovered the Frank family. Anne was sent to a concentration camp, where she died of typhus at the age of fifteen. Only Anne’s father survived the war and published his daughter’s diary after his return to the Netherlands. The Anne Frank diary has been published in many languages and read by millions of people. It has become the most poignant evidence of how the Jewish people were exterminated during the Second World War.