JERRY ZOLYNSKY

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
Veronica Leijdesdorff (second from
left) with her siblings. Veronica’s
father’s store in Haarlem, the
Netherlands, was successful prior
to World War II. Veronica’s Dutch
cookbook. Abraham Hildesheim’s ID
card. Esther Posner with her mother’s
embroidered tablecloth at the exhibit.

Photographs of the Franks as
well as the additional occupants
of the secret annex represent
ways in which millions of Jews,
Gypsies, the disabled and Slavs
were persecuted by politi-
cal decisions and the actions
of individual perpetrators.
Additional displays provided
by locals give a closer-to-home
perspective. Docent-led presen-

tations will enhance the viewing
experiences at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 19,
April 9, May 7 and June 4.
“The preeminence of the
Holocaust Memorial Center gives
this exhibition special meaning
to us at the Anne Frank Center
for Mutual Respect,” says Steven
Goldstein, executive director of
the organization.
“What an extraordinary oppor-

tunity to share the message of
Anne’s life and diary to empower
students, families and communi-
ties to work together to build a
world based on mutual respect
and apply the lessons of those
times to contemporary issues.
“We want to use history as a
way to examine prejudice and
discrimination in the world
today, and we’re making a
commitment to come back to
Michigan with advocacy pro-
grams.”
The center, founded in
1959 by Otto Frank, is the U.S.
national organization in the
Anne Frank family of organiza-
tions worldwide. Besides teach-
ing about the Frank experience
and the Holocaust, the center
produces programs across the
country to address issues of
prejudice.
“Exhibits have evolved in this
social media age so this exhibit
has extraordinary images that
have a huge emotional punch
and words that are carefully
chosen to speak to the heart

without having to read walls
and walls of words,” Goldstein
says.
Sonja Kass of Huntington
Woods was born at the end of
the 1940s and learned from her
mother about family experi-
ences escaping the Nazis as
troops were invading the area
surrounding Amsterdam.
Her father, the late Abraham
Hildesheim, had used the first
name of Henk to distract atten-
tion from his Jewish identity as
he served in the Brussels under-
ground to provide false papers
for other Jews. Her mother,
Veronica Leijdesdorff, remains
in Brussels, where she had been
hidden and recently celebrated
her 101st birthday.
Museum display cases show
items, such as her father’s
Jewish identity form from the
time her parents had to leave
the Netherlands for Belgium to
seek safety. A Dutch cookbook,
given to her mother, holds
recipes that helped her father
recover from maladies suffered

jn

because of the lack of food.
“With the documents from
my father, people will see the
evolution of cards and how they
represent the increasing restric-
tions on Jews,” says Kass, who
came to the United States in
1978 with her husband, inter-
national attorney Robert Kass,
then assigned to Belgium.
“My father never talked about
his life before, during or after
the war. My mother, at first, talk-
ed about times before the war,
when she had a wonderful life
growing up. Later on, she told
us about war experiences; she
had a lot of near-miss stories.”
“What is so special about this
exhibit is that it helps visitors
truly grapple with what was
happening in Europe through
the lens of a young girl,” says
Robin Axelrod, director of edu-
cation at the HMC. “At a time
when acceptance of others is
at such a low point, the lessons
that ‘Anne Frank: A History for
Today’ teaches are more impor-
tant now than ever.” •

February 2 • 2017

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