A moved Peyton Mathis describes Anne Frank’s final days.
by Joseph Schultz
The Wayland community had a profound and moving experience Thursday night at the “Anne Frank: A History for Today” Community Night presentation.
The exhibit, hosted by the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina, featured Wayland Union 8th-, 9th-, 10th- and 11th-grade students explaining each display, taking on duties to a museum docent
Holocaust educator Corey Harbaugh, of the Anne Frank Center, explained to the more than 80 attendees that the students were taught about the Holocaust and the Frank family, they would not be following a script. Harbaugh noted that the exhibit would be unique that way because the students would provide their own perspectives on the history they had learned.
“History never ends,” Harbaugh told participating students.
The event was particularly poignant for Harbaugh, given the attack at a West Bloomfield synagogue earlier in the day.
At the start of the displays, one poster featured photos of Anne Frank and her family, while another displayed photos of the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. Toward the end of the displays, the family photos were gone, replaced with images of the Secret Annex, and the concentration camps.
Students described the photos and events that took place with each photo
Attendees also viewed the short film called The Ice Cream Man, which tells the story Ernst Cahn, a little-known hero of the resistance against the Nazis in Amsterdam.
This exhibit was made possible because a donor saw the presentation last year in Kalamazoo and wanted to bring it to school children in West Michigan Allegan became the first county in the country to have Anne Frank’s story offered to every school district.
Harbaugh, who has ties to West Michigan, reached out to friend Teresa Fulk, assistant super indent for instruction, about the exhibit. Fulk jumped at the opportunity to bring the exhibit to Wayland, working with the Allegan County Community Foundation and the Allegan Area ESA to make it happen.
The “Anne Frank: A History for Today” event will be presented again at 7 p.m. March 25 at the Wayland Union Schools Administration Building. The event is free to the public.
