Study tour group visits Anne Frank’s secret annex and feels tragedy firsthand
Apr. 2, 2015
by Uzaemonnaotsuka Toukai, Staff Writer
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Eight high school and university students from the Hiroshima area on a study tour sponsored by the Hiroshima Peace Creation Fund are now in the Netherlands to learn more about the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany. On March 26, they visited the secret annex where Anne Frank (1929-1945), known for The Diary of a Young Girl, hid from the Nazis. They saw the actual diary and came into contact with the tragedy of Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jewish people.
Tour members passed through the entrance hidden by a rotating bookcase, climbed steep and narrow stairs, and stepped into the secret annex where Anne and her family hid for about two years. As they walked over the squeaking floor, the students imagined how difficult it must have been for Anne and her family to live in this room without making a sound.
Prior to seeing the annex, the tour members met with Ronald Leopold, 54, the executive director of the Anne Frank House. Mr. Leopold explained to the students, “This is a place of tragedy. But I would like you to think about the fact that Anne continued to hope and dream about her future until the last moment.”
Fumiko Tokimori, 19, a freshman at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima, said, “I imagined how she must have felt suffocated in that room, hidden behind thick curtains. I felt a lump in my throat when I saw her diary, filled with such small handwriting.”
The members of the study tour will return to Japan on March 29. Afterward, they will share their activities and impressions in the Chugoku Shimbun. The students will also report on their trip to Europe at their high schools and universities to discuss how memories of the war damage should be handed down to future generations.
(Originally published on March 28, 2015）
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Eight high school and university students from the Hiroshima area on a study tour sponsored by the Hiroshima Peace Creation Fund are now in the Netherlands to learn more about the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany. On March 26, they visited the secret annex where Anne Frank (1929-1945), known for The Diary of a Young Girl, hid from the Nazis. They saw the actual diary and came into contact with the tragedy of Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jewish people.
Tour members passed through the entrance hidden by a rotating bookcase, climbed steep and narrow stairs, and stepped into the secret annex where Anne and her family hid for about two years. As they walked over the squeaking floor, the students imagined how difficult it must have been for Anne and her family to live in this room without making a sound.
Prior to seeing the annex, the tour members met with Ronald Leopold, 54, the executive director of the Anne Frank House. Mr. Leopold explained to the students, “This is a place of tragedy. But I would like you to think about the fact that Anne continued to hope and dream about her future until the last moment.”
Fumiko Tokimori, 19, a freshman at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima, said, “I imagined how she must have felt suffocated in that room, hidden behind thick curtains. I felt a lump in my throat when I saw her diary, filled with such small handwriting.”
The members of the study tour will return to Japan on March 29. Afterward, they will share their activities and impressions in the Chugoku Shimbun. The students will also report on their trip to Europe at their high schools and universities to discuss how memories of the war damage should be handed down to future generations.
(Originally published on March 28, 2015）
