"How wonderful it is that
nobody need wait a single minute before starting to improve the world."
-
Anne Frank
Today we went to Anne Frank’s house. I was surprised
by the fact that until this day, people still don’t really understand how
empowering and meaningful words can be, at least not until we experience things like
this.
When we start the tour to the museum, in this little
room, there are four televisions where a girl’s voice is relating the uprising
of the Nazi-Germany and how they have started treating the Jewish people,
leading many of them to emigrate.
There isn’t a single whisper. Not like in school when
the teacher is passing a movie and there is that occasional naughty kid who has
to keep talking. Or when we are mourning those who’ve perished in a terrible
accident or attack by offering them a minute of silence and there is that
hush-hush sound a few seconds before people understand what is happening.
You can only hear the British accent of the girl
portraying Anne and the sound of people breathing around you. And, when she
stops talking, you see dozens of people staring at a black screen, not daring
to move, to speak, some have even forgotten to breath for just a few seconds. A
few seconds before normalcy takes over and you think: “if people are so
moved by what happened, if those words have touched them in such ways they have
even forgotten about everything else, then why can’t we feel moved by things
happening right now? Why do we still allow horrors like this to go
unpunished?”
 |
| Anne Frank's room |
We continue the tour, and although I feel deeply about
what happened to Anne and felt even more when I read the book and found out
that she didn’t have her happy ending, I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t her
death that made her silent voice heard by thousands. I read a smilar book
to Anne Frank’s diary, called Clara’s War, about a girl who kept a
journal while she and her family were hiding under the floorboards of a
friend’s house, who was hiding them. The life conditions that Clara and her
family went through where much harsher than Anne’s, and they almost suffocate a
child to death over fear of being caught, but she never had the public
knowledge Anne Frank had. Perhaps, is due to the fact that her book was
published later on, when the war was a distant thing, when the pain of it was
just a scar that didn’t hurt anymore. Or perhaps, her survival didn’t quite get
the catalyst factor that drove Anne to fame.
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| The bookcase that hid Anne Frank and her family |
She wanted to be famous even after her death. She
wanted to leave a mark that would last even after her eyes were closed and she
got her wish. But why are we only moved by those who’ve suffered when
it’s already too late to help them?
Racism is not a thing completely in the past. Discrimination
against religious believes are as present now as in the anti-semitic times. War
horrors are still allowed in some countries, where people don’t have anyone fighting
for them. And what was the first thing the USA did after WWII? They created a
segregated country. South Africa created the apartheid Jerusalem started a war with Palestine…
And now we
have countries refusing to admit the Holocaust ever existed, telling us it’s a made-up
story.
Will humans ever learn from their mistakes?
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