Story of Anne Frank told at Rotorua exhibition

The story of Anne Frank, the young girl who hid from the Nazis and died in a concentration camp in 1945, is being told in Rotorua.

It's been more than a year in the planning and Rotorua's Dutch residents are among those excited about the exhibition, Anne Frank: A History For Today, which opens at Rotorua Museum tomorrow and will run for five weeks as part of a worldwide tour.

Douwe Visser from the Rotorua Netherlands Society said club members had been planning for more than a year to bring the exhibition to Rotorua.

The society and Rotorua's Geyser Community Foundation donated more than $5000 to get it to the city.

"We are quite enthusiastic about it," he said.

"Anne Frank was quite close to the Dutch people's hearts."

There was a permanent exhibition in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her Jewish family were hidden from the Germans, he said.

The exhibition has toured more than 150 cities around the world. It features more than 200 personal Frank family photographs and excerpts from Anne's diary which tells the story of her family through WWII and her experiences of hiding in a confined attic from the Nazis.

It tells of her experience, eventual capture and transportation to concentration camps and her death from typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945 when she was 16. She died in the camp two days after her sister.

The exhibition includes a short documentary telling the remarkable stories of New Zealanders who survived the Holocaust or helped people in hiding.

Rotorua Museum programme manager William Yip said visitors would find the exhibition moving and educational.

"It's a very special exhibition. It's quite unique and amazing ... a lot of people will know about her but don't know her story," he said.

Many older school children had read The Diary of Anne Frank and the exhibition would add to their knowledge and experience.

"It's a very private exhibition."

The exhibition will be open until May 6. Entry is free for locals with proof of identification and local address.

 

Email: cherie.taylor@dailypost.co.nz