Anne Frank would have been 96 years old on Thursday. In honor of the famous teen diarist and Holocaust victim’s birthday, “Anne Frank: The Exhibition” — which is now on view at the Center for Jewish History — is giving out 10,000 copies of her book, “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.”
Commonly known as “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the books will be distributed to students and families beginning Thursday morning at DREAM Charter School in East Harlem. Later, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., they’ll be given away at locations throughout the five boroughs, including Union Square Park’s center lawn.
Books will continue to be distributed across the city all summer, until supplies run out.
“The Diary of Anne Frank is not just relevant — it is essential for young New Yorkers today,” Gavriel Rosenfeld, the president of the Center for Jewish History, said in a statement. “Anne’s story is a powerful mirror reflecting the dangers of antisemitism and hatred that persist in our world.”
The books aren’t the only freebies during this citywide initiative, called “Summer of Reflection: The Legacy of Anne Frank.”
On Friday, “Anne Frank: The Exhibition,” which is presented by the Anne Frank House, will offer free admission starting at 2:45 p.m. through 5:00 p.m. Additional cost-free access to the exhibition will be available on “select Fridays” starting July 11 for New York Public Library, Queens Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library card-holders.
“Anne Frank: The Exhibition” opened in January in New York City to sold-out crowds. It’s the first-ever full-scale replica of Frank’s secret annex — the attic apartment in Amsterdam where Frank, her family, and four other Jews hid from the Nazis for more than two years before being discovered.
The exhibition — which has been extended through October — recreates, in painstaking detail, what life was like for the eight Jewish residents of the annex, down to minute details like peeling wallpaper and the photos tacked to the walls.
It includes more than 100 original artifacts related to the Frank family, many of which have never before been shown publicly. These include a Dutch version of Monopoly — a game Anne Frank loved, which she had played with a classmate at Amsterdam’s Jewish Lyceum. They also include a 1947 letter from a New York publisher to her father, Otto Frank, declining to publish the soon-to-be world-famous diary of his murdered daughter.
Today, “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” has been published in more than 70 languages. In the U.S., despite rising antisemitism, Frank’s diary has recently been censored in multiple school districts in Florida and in Texas, both in a graphic novel adaptation and in its original form. This push comes from conservative and “parents’ rights” groups like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education.
Here in New York, there is no mandate to teach “The Diary of Anne Frank” across the city’s 1,600 public schools. And yet, it remains a popular educational tool, and is “widely included” in middle school curricula across the five boroughs, according to a spokesperson at the city’s Department of Education.
“Anne Frank’s story is one of hope, humanity, and courage, and it belongs in our classrooms and in our communities as a key part of this work,” New York City Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement. “I am confident that the distribution of 10,000 copies of her diary will leave a lasting impact on our young people, just as it did on my own students when I was a high school English teacher.”
For more information on “Anne Frank: The Exhibition,” click here.
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