With our educational programmes we aim to encourage young people to reflect on the social developments of the past and the present when it comes to prejudice, discrimination, racism and antisemitism, always based on the life story of Anne Frank.
Youth Team
Every year young people between 16 and 20 years old can apply to join the Youth Team of the Anne Frank House. The young people are given a training programme. They learn about the history of Anne Frank, the Second World War and the Holocaust, and work on the question of the significance of this history for today. What lessons can we learn from the life story of Anne Frank? And how do prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination and antisemitism work? They deal with these questions in workshops and develop projects for classmates and other peers. The involvement, commitment and creativity of the young people are enormous. Twelve young people were given the training programme in 2018.
‘I want to organise more and help more people learn about these issues.’
Youth Team alumni
As well as the twelve young people that take part in the Youth Team, sixteen alumni are active for the Anne Frank House. Some act as mentors for the current Youth Team, others organise a museum visit and educational programme for classmates, colleagues or asylum seekers/status holders. Alumni also help with the organisation of training programmes for police officers and seminars for teachers.
Summer school 1938.2018
More than 80 young people from sixteen countries took part in a five-day summer school in Berlin. The young people are involved in the worldwide activities of the Anne Frank House, the Anne Frank Zentrum and their partners. The participants came together to commemorate Kristallnacht, to reflect on its significance for today and to develop an educational project to combat prejudice and discrimination, which they would carry out on their return to their own countries.
Training programmes for teachers
The Anne Frank House organises workshops, training programmes and meetings for teachers and trainee teachers in the Netherlands and abroad. We also support professionals who play a role in promoting equal treatment and opening up prejudice and discrimination for discussion. There was great interest in the training programme ‘Responding to prejudice and discrimination for teachers’, in which high school, vocational school and museum teachers took part.
28 teacher training programmes with 824 participants took place in the Netherlands.
Guest lessons
The Anne Frank House, with the help of freelance workshop leaders, provided guest lessons for various educational institutions in 2018:
- Secondary Vocational Education: 147 guests lessons on citizenship for 2,790 Secondary Vocational Education students at regional training centres throughout the Netherlands.
- Primary Education: 12 guests lessons on Anne Frank and the Holocaust for 300 pupils (7th/8th grades) and 28 guest lessons on prejudice for 840 pupils (5th/6th and 7th/8th grades).
- Teacher Training: 12 guests lessons on citizenship in primary education for trainee teachers.
Partner schools
The Anne Frank House works with three colleges on the themes of prejudice and discrimination in a long-term relationship: the Calvijn College and the Metis Montessori College in Amsterdam and the Zuiderzee College in Zaandam.
Anne Frank Journal
Many primary schools order the Anne Frank Journal for their 7th and 8th grades every year, and use it in preparation for the remembrance events on 4 and 5 May in lessons about Anne Frank, the Holocaust and the Second World War. The pupils are between 10 and 12 years old. The journal forms the basis of the package, and consists of 16 pages full of articles, illustrations, quotations and practical activities.
The theme of the 2018 journal was Learning from history and connected with the resistance theme year of the WW2 Platform. Primary schools ordered a total of over 80,000 copies.
‘Conspiracy Theories in the Classroom’ brochure
As a teacher, how can you deal with a pupil who believes in conspiracy theories? What should you (and should you not) do? What do you say in reply? The Anne Frank House and the Schools and Safety Foundation have together produced a brochure for secondary and vocational schools with information and practical tips on the theme of conspiracy theory thinking.
In the introduction the developers say: “Take pupils who believe in conspiracy theories seriously. Discrediting or refuting a conspiracy theory with factual information alone doesn’t work. What does work is searching out the truth together with the pupil. Be open and inquisitive in this. You can read about how you can do that in detail in the (Dutch) download Conspiracy Theories in the Classroom”.
Theatre for pre-vocational secondary education
The interactive theatre production Back to Back, developed in partnership with DEGASTEN Theatre Company, gives pre-vocational secondary education students the opportunity to reflect on identity and diversity. Back to Back consists of a theatre production and three lessons. The actors show students that, despite a diversity of life stories and backgrounds, we are all connected with each other.
In 2018 Back to Back reached over 9,000 students.
For teachers there is a training day, together with the actors. The training helps teachers to facilitate the discussions with students that take place after the theatre production. These discussions are not always easy, but they are very important.
Training programmes for police officers
Combating discrimination in society calls for constant vigilance. This requires an active approach, also from professionals such as the police. What are the possibilities to tackle discrimination? And what is the role of the police in this? In 2018 these themes formed the basis for 38 training programmes and study days that we organised especially for police officers, 590 of them in 2018. The educational products are clearly set out in the brochure ‘Activities for the police’.
We have set up an Anne Frank House Police Team, in which ten team leaders from various regions take part. They follow an intensive programme on the themes of diversity, diversity and equal treatment, and are given guidelines for leading group discussions on these themes.
Fair Play
The ‘serious game’ Fair Play helps young people to reflect on various forms of prejudice and discrimination on and off the football field in an educational and fun way. How do they respond to familiar situations? The football game forms the basis of the Fair Play workshops that the Anne Frank House presents together with professional football clubs. In this way the clubs make a contribution to society. 26 workshops for young people were presented in partnership with the Ajax, NAC, Excelsior, FC Utrecht and Willem ll football clubs.
Fan Coach Project
Besides the Fair Play workshops for young people there is the Fan Coach Project for football supporters. This project focuses on combating antisemitic chants in and around football stadiums. According to the supporters this has nothing to do with antisemitism: they are simply chants against Ajax supporters, who use the nickname ‘SuperJews’ as a badge of honour. But these supporters do not take account of how the chants affect people, particularly the Jewish supporters of the same club. The Fan Coach Project aims to help these fans to understand this.
The football clubs Feyenoord and FC Utrecht work together with the Anne Frank House. Football supporters visit various wartime locations and Holocaust monuments in their own cities and get to know Jewish supporters of their own clubs, who share their personal stories. “We come together in the love for our club, but the words that you sing cause terrible pain”, said one. “You force us to relive the fact that half of our family were gassed.” That made a big impression. Supporters recognised the effect they have on their fellow fans, and that chanting antisemitic slogans cannot go together with loyalty to their club and their city.
Seventh monitoring report
The Seventh Report on Racism, Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremist Violence in the Netherlands highlights 3,486 incidents in the fields of racism, antisemitism and right-wing extremist violence in 2017 (4,038 incidents in 2016). The Anne Frank House commissioned the Verwey-Jonker Institute to monitor complaints filed with the police concerning incidents involving racism, antisemitism and right-wing extremist violence in the Netherlands.
Across the board, a decrease in racist incidents can be seen. The total number of incidents with an antisemitic character has also decreased, with the exception of intentional antisemitic incidents. There has however been an increase in the severity of all forms of incidents. Another striking finding is the increasing space for right-wing extremist ideology in society and politics.
‘Ideas of right-wing extremist groups seem to be increasingly separated from the legacy of national socialism in the Second World War, and are more often seen as independent of any other political opinion.’
Travelling exhibitions
The international travelling exhibition Anne Frank – A History For Today has been displayed in more than 3,500 locations in 77 countries since 1996. The exhibition Let Me Be Myself - The Life Story of Anne Frank has been travelling around the world since 2015, and could be seen 614 times in 18 countries.
The Anne Frank House trains young people to guide their peers around the exhibition. The young people learn about the content and background of the exhibition, how they can most effectively communicate the information and how they can bring up present-day social developments. This form, known as peer to peer education, leads to great involvement among the young people who visit the exhibition.
Switzerland (CH)
To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day the exhibition Let Me Be Myself - The Life Story of Anne Frank was displayed in the Palais des Nations of the United Nations in Geneva. Twenty young people were given a training programme and guided their peers and other visitors around the exhibition. Garance Reus-Deelder, managing director of the Anne Frank House, spoke at the opening.
‘We are immensely proud of the passionate group of peer guides who were trained over the past weekend and who will, after this opening ceremony, bring Otto’s dream alive by guiding you all around the exhibition.’
Kazakhstan (KZ)
Since 2016 the travelling Anne Frank exhibition has been on display in Kazakhstan. The eighth city where the exhibition could be seen was Uralsk. 26 students from schools and colleges were trained as peer guides to lead their fellow students around the exhibition. The exhibition drew 2,000 visitors in one month.
Alaska (US)
In October employees of the Anne Frank House gave a training programme to over 60 students from various secondary schools in Anchorage and Fairbanks in Alaska. The training was partly organised by the Dutch consulate in San Francisco and the Dutch Honorary Consul in Alaska.
Japan (JP)
In October there was a special opening of the exhibition Anne Frank – A History For Today in Kyoto. It was the 100th time that the exhibition had been displayed, as part of an educational tour that began in Tokyo in December 2009. The exhibition has travelled all around Japan and could be seen in universities, teacher training institutes, secondary schools and libraries in various cities.