July 5, 2010
The Anne Frank Foundation will publish a comic version of part of the diary of Anne Frank this week.
Written by Sid Jacobson and drawn by Ernest Colón, the 160-page-long graphical biography will be sold for 15 euro. There are also editions planned for English, German, French, Italian and Spanish speaking countries.
Link: RTL Nieuws. Illustration: annefrank.org.
Tags: Anne Frank
December 7, 2009
A clone of the famous Anne Frank chestnut tree was planted in a park South of Amsterdam last Friday. Alderman Marijke Vos and the CEO of the Anne Frank Foundation, Hans Westra, planted the young tree in the Amsterdamse Bos in Amstelveen, Metro reports.
Anne Frank used to look out on the tree when she was hiding for the Nazis, and wrote about it in her famous diary. Lately, the tree has been developing a disease, which led to the foundation deciding to plant 150 cuttings before it was too late. The other 149 chestnuts will be planted over the upcoming years.
Link: BN/De Stem.
Tags: Anne Frank, trees
October 5, 2009
“Here you can see Anne Frank leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It’s the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film, according to the Anne Frank House.”
Remember that if the people over at Dutch copyright collection agency Buma Stemra have their way, we won’t be able to show you fun vids anymore because it would cost us thousands of euro a year. Feel free to sign the petition: petitiononline.
Also in Anne Frank news, an asteroid between the Mars and Jupiter has been named Miep Gies last Sunday in honour of the Dutch woman who preserved the diary of Anne Frank. “The International Astronomical Union (IAU) said it wanted to draw attention to the steadfast courage of the now 100-year-old last surviving helper of the Frank family who hid in a building behind a house in Amsterdam during World War II.”
(Link: Presurfer, earthtimes.org)
Tags: Anne Frank, asteroid, Miep Gies
July 31, 2009
Anne Frank’s diary has been added to the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO. UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Register to protect documentary heritage reflecting the diversity of the world’s peoples, languages, and cultures from ‘collective amnesia’.
Although often mistaken as a Dutch girl by many probably because she wrote her diary in Dutch, Anne Frank was a Jewish Germany girl who wrote about the two years she and her family spent in hiding in the Netherlands during WWII.
I still find it fascinating that Anne Frank is seen a source of Dutch pride — with good reason of course — while the growing amount of populists in the Netherlands do not think any Dutch person with a second passport qualifies as ‘part of the club’.
(Link: unmultimedia.org)
Tags: Anne Frank
February 16, 2009
Miep Gies, the woman who was important in Anne Frank’s life and pivotal in what we now know about Anne Frank turned 100 yesterday. In 1942, when the Frank family looked for a place to hide, Miep Gies, her husband Jan and three others helped the Franks stay hidden in the Achterhuis. Then, when through betrayal the Franks were taken to concentration camps, Gies managed to hide Anne Frank’s diary from the Nazis with the idea of giving it back to Anne after the war.
As a result, the world can now put a face to one of the millions that were murdered.
Even without the meddling of evildoers not many are given to live to a hundred. Sometimes karma just works. Miep, I hope you had a very good 100th birthday.
Photo: Anne Frank Stichting (Miep Gies in 1993).
Tags: Anne Frank, heros, holocaust, people
November 17, 2008
I have no idea why this happens or why this is considered news, but there’s this ‘game’ the print media plays every once in a while which I call “Find the Dutch person” (“Zoek de Nederlander”). Allow me to explain.
Way back when Britney Spears was on the straight and narrow, Dutch Daily De Gelderlander had an article that read something like “Britney Spears has Dutch blood” and went on to explain she had ‘family’ in the province of Gelderland on her father’s side and that made her one fourth Dutch. This was seen as a source of pride.
Then right after Estonia won the Eurovision Songfestival in 2001, the papers said the win was “half Dutch” because Dave Benton was born on the island of Aruba, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This came off more like envy because the Netherlands’ last win in the Songfestival dates back to 1975.
And today, popular Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that Tiger Woods has Dutch blood because he is – get ready for this – one eighth Dutch! And apparently he’s really proud of being ‘multicultural’ too. He’s about as ‘African-American’ as Barack Obama is. That was sarcasm.
What’s wrong with the Dutch people ‘we’ (you) already have? As a Canadian, I go out of my way to point out that someone is Canadian or else they will be classified as American or French. Back in 1996 De Telegraaf called actor Leslie Nielsen American and sometime around 2004 some Flemish exhibition centre boasted about the great American singer Neil Young. I couldn’t let that last one slide.
Although there are tons of great Dutch people, islands and all who are surely a source of pride, I just cannot understand this identity soul searching. Even Anne Frank was seen a source of Dutch pride although she was German, while the growing amount of populists in the Netherlands are still not sure any Dutch person with a second passport qualifies.
Tags: Anne Frank, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Dave Benton, Dutch identity, Neil Young, Tiger Woods
October 5, 2008
According to De Telegraaf, The Dutch government had no objections to the house where Anne Frank wrote her wartime diary being torn down in the 1950s. The place where the young Jewish girl described life hiding from persecution by the Nazis was not considered worthy of preservation, De Telegraaf said, quoting from a letter written by Joseph Luns, the foreign minister at the time.
Luns said the house where Anne and her family hid from 1942 until her betrayal in 1944 was “not a historical monument of the Netherlands” and unremarkable from an architectural point of view. The letter, dated May 3, was sent to the Dutch ambassador to the United States, informing him of the official position of the Ministry of Education, Art and Science towards the Anne Frank House. The newspaper said the letter was discovered recently when the part of the ministry’s archives was being moved to a new home.
According to the Anne Frank Foundation, it was apparently written in response to questions by Americans why the house was not declared an historic building. Located on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht, the house began attracting its first visitors shortly after the book Anne Frank – The Dairy of a Young Girl was published in 1947. In the mid-1950s, a real estate firm proposed knocking it down to make way for a modern building, but dropped the idea after a series of protests.
(Link: earthtimes.org)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House
January 18, 2008
It probably remains to be seen and heard, but yes, the Spanish are making a musical out of Anne Frank’s Diary:
A Spanish production company is taking the unusual step of turning The Diary of Anne Frank into a musical. The production at Madrid’s Calderón Theatre does not open until 28th February, but it is already generating a few raised eyebrows.
Not everyone is convinced that the world-famous story of a Jewish teenager who became a victim of the Holocaust should be staged in this way. Tragedy is common fare for opera, but musicals are more often associated with happier subjects.
British theatre critic Michael Billington questioned the need for a musical version of Anne’s diary, in an entry on his blog called Anne Frank – the Musical strikes a false note. It basically asks if we really need this musical. And I have been laughing in my coffee writing this, as one person commented, “won’t the nazis hear her as soon as the tapdancing and singing starts?” Picture the audience participation at a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show wtih someone calling out to the Nazis storming in the house “she’s in the attic!”.
The project has the backing of the Anne Frank Foundation, who own the house in Amsterdam where Anne and her family hid during the early 1940s. However, according to reports in the Australian media, the family of Anne Frank object to productions of this kind which treat her story as ‘entertainment’.
While the production has attracted media interest, it is not the first time that The Diary of Anne Frank has been turned into a musical. An English language musical under the name ‘Yours, Anne’ was produced Off Broadway in 1985.
I can’t help but add that although the Dutch know that Anne Frank was Jewish, she was in fact German – not Dutch. I say this because she was put on a list of the 10 most important Dutch figures of all time by the general public. Influential people are conveniently Dutch when it suits the Dutch media.
(Link: radionetherlands.nl)
Tags: Anne Frank, musicals, Spanish version
November 20, 2007
The fate of the Anne Frank tree has been decided, after a judge had a good look at the tree just before making his decision: it may not be chopped down. Remember, it was really sick and hundreds of thousands of euro were spent to try and save it. At 7 pm Dutch time, a judge decided that the tree needs to be healed or fixed and that there are still things that they can do to keep it alive properly. He added that if the tree causes damages to houses nearby, owners will be compensated.
To anticipate the possible cutting of the tree, grafts have been made. And then there’s our earlier posting about the chestnuts of the Anne Frank tree sold on eBay. Apparently, they currently have a bid of $USD 10,340, which is pretty useless at this point in time.
The 150-year-old tree (a white horse chestnut tree – Aesculus hippocastanum) stands in the inner garden of the house at Keizersgracht 188, one street over from the Anne Frank House, which is on the Prinsengracht.
Anne Frank wrote the following entries about the chestnut tree in her diary:
23 February 1944
The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.18 April 1944
April is glorious, not too hot and not too cold, with occasional light showers. Our chestnut tree is in leaf, and here and there you can already see a few small blossoms.13 May 1944
Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.
(Info: Live RTL 4 television, Photo: annefranktree.com, link: annefrank.org)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, chesnuts, tree
November 19, 2007
It was on the news for many months, the scheduled chopping down of the Anne Frank chestnut tree probably on November 21, the tree she talked about in her world-famous diary. Amsterdam does not chop down anything without serious consideration, and according to many experts, this tree has to go, although so many people have so many ideas on how to save it. There is even a webcam on the tree and the secret annex of the house.
According to local TV station AT5, the highest bid on the tree’s chestnuts is EUR 355, for sale on eBay. Someone who claims to live on the next street over from the sick Anne Frank tree put the chestnuts on eBay last Friday. The idea is that someone can grow their own Anne Frank tree. Neighbours and associations will be fighting the chopping down of the tree until the very last day.
(Link: AT5.nl, Photo: annefranktree.com)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, chesnuts, eBay, tree
