The Legacy of Anne Frank

by The Legacy of Anne Frank (retail) (epub)

  Early in the morning on the first day of the exhibition’s week-long visit to Reading Prison, Herbert Levy, the Anne Frank Trust’s Principal Guide, walked in through the daunting prison gate to spend the morning training a group of the prisoners to act as the exhibition guides. Herbert understood incarceration, due to his wartime experience as a German-Jewish refugee child held in the interment camp on the Isle of Man.

  Inside one of the prison’s communal rooms, the ‘Anne Frank, A History for Today’ exhibition stood awaiting its mission; its stands and panels having been set up the evening before by a group of prisoners. Another group of curious prisoners, the future exhibition guides, were waiting for Herbert. They had already been provided with books and guide notes to read in advance of their training and had been shown a 25-minute film on Anne’s life that had been created by the Anne Frank House. Herbert introduced himself, asked each prisoner his name and proceeded with the training session, which involved giving each prisoner the responsibility for learning and then describing three of the thirty-four panels. Herbert was mindful that in a few hours the group would be demonstrating their knowledge to the local Mayor, the prison’s board of friends and other dignitaries.

  Prisoner involvement on this prominent level was a radical innovation. It proved to be a format so positive in outcome that it has remained throughout the sixteen years the Anne Frank Trust has so far been visiting prisons. Governors of prisons, especially ones who are known to be effective, spend their careers being moved around the country from prison to prison, sometimes being called upon to help turn round problematic establishments. Reading’s governor Nick Leader became a great advocate for the Anne Frank prison education programme, which he subsequently invited to several further establishments he was sent by Her Majesty’s Prison Service to run.

  After the positive response to our week at Reading Prison, we were invited to Her Majesty’s Prison Durham, a Category A high-security establishment. In Durham there was a surprising additional element to the programme. The governor had heard that Eva Schloss was one of the Trust’s founders and wanted her to come and speak to the prisoners about her experiences during the Holocaust. When Nic and I first visited Durham Prison to plan the event, we were very concerned at how Eva would react to seeing protective barbed wire around the intimidating high grey stone perimeter walls and the German Shepherd guard dogs used by the prison officers on their patrols. The prison had been built in 1819, during the pre-Victorian reign of King George IV, and was the site of many judicial executions on its gallows.

  As I suspected, when I approached Eva with the idea of going in to a high-security prison, she was initially extremely wary. But never one to shirk a challenge, in the autumn of 2002, this courageous and determined lady boarded a train and travelled the 270 miles to Durham, in the furthermost north-east of England. She spoke first at the men’s prison and was then taken to repeat her talk in the adjacent women’s prison, where on a tour of its facilities, she spotted the notorious serial killer Rosemary West quietly sitting reading in the library. Soon after Eva’s visit the women’s prison at Durham was closed due to overcrowding and the high rate of suicides.

  Eva later recalled about going to Durham; ‘I thought the experience would upset me, but I realized I had a message for the inmates. This is a project I like doing because of the big impact it has on the prisoners. They can relate to my suffering and realize that they are not so badly off after all.’ Eva has continued to speak at prisons around the UK, supporting visits of the Anne Frank exhibition. I have been present at many of these talks and have seen for myself how attentive and respectful the prisoners are towards her, even younger prisoners and those from abroad who may not catch every word of her still pronounced Viennese accent. At the end of her talk, often lasting over an hour, she concludes by reminding prisoners of the opportunities they are given during their time inside to study and to learn new skills that can help them with their future lives. Coming from a survivor of Auschwitz, where every future possibility was focused on extermination, this message of hope carries huge weight.

  Many of Britain’s prison establishments were built in the Victorian age. Although in those days prisoners were deprived of all human contact as a form of punishment the prisons were designed for each inmate to have their own cell, which today would be considered a luxury. Ironically, in the nineteenth century, young Zahid Mubarak’s murder would have probably been avoided. As I write, Britain has the largest prison population in Western Europe and a report in February 2015 stated that 60 per cent of the country’s prisons were overcrowded.

  Wormwood Scrubs Prison in West London, or ‘The Scrubs’ as it is known, was built in 1875 by nine prisoners selected from other prisons. The bricks used were manufactured on the site. During the Second World War it was commandeered for the war effort and housed MI5, the British counter-intelligence agency. After the war it went back to being an overcrowded Victorian-era prison and by 1979, after IRA prisoners had staged a rooftop protest over visiting rights, its former governor wrote to The Times newspaper describing it as ‘a penal dustbin.’ In 1986, Charles Bronson, once described as ‘Britain’s most violent prisoner’, attacked and nearly strangled the prison’s governor and then in the 1990s, twenty-seven prison officers were suspended for brutality towards the prisoners.

  In December 2014, Eva came along to speak on the final day of the Anne Frank exhibition in Wormwood Scrubs. Jewish Chronicle reporter Rosa Doherty came to hear her and her subsequent article covered a full double-page spread of the newspaper. Doherty wrote:

  Inside a 19th-century chapel, flanked by high-security walls, sat row upon row of hardened criminals. Ninety of them, clad in regulation grey track-suits, waited for the most unlikely of guests to a high-security prison – an 85-year-old, 5ft 2in woman dressed daintily in cardigan, trouser-suit and shoulder-bag. For the next two hours, the Wormwood Scrubs inmates sat tall, hands clasped often at their chest, while not one of them spoke as Eva Schloss described in vivid detail how her family was betrayed, captured by the Nazis, and suffered at the hands of sadistic guards at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp. There was no sound other than the occasional gasp or a discreet shuffle as someone moved uncomfortably in his seat . . .

  Eva spoke calmly of the time she was tortured and made to strip naked in front of male guards, and revealed how she and her mother were forced to join a line for ‘work’ while others were separated and sent to ‘shower’ – the Nazi slang for gas chambers. She witnessed friends being dragged from their queue to take their place among those destined for death. She told how her father’s last words to her were ones of regret and failure at the thought he had been unable to protect his family from the horrors of the Nazis. These and other stories – such as how she had her hair shaved in the cold of winter, and no clothes to protect her skin in summer – visibly moved her tough audience. One of them, David (name altered), admitted that the way Eva Schloss had described her own father’s reaction had reduced him to tears. ‘I got chills. I was the same age as her father when I was sent to prison and that is how I feel about my family. I’ve let them down,’ he said.

  Michael, 23, who is serving a two-year term for possessing a replica gun, said: ‘It made me cry to hear her story. I came to this country when I was very young. My wife and kids are British and I’m facing deportation, all because of my mistake. Even though it is nothing like what happened to Eva, I can relate to that feeling of being kicked out of somewhere you call home because people think you are bad. In the same way people say all Jews are this or all Muslims are that, not all prisoners are the same. We are still human beings. I’m young and I want the chance to change my life. Eva’s story teaches us all about responsibility. The Nazis were responsible for their actions, and Eva was responsible for how she felt after.’

  British prisoners have also enjoyed hearing the remarkably active nonagenarian Freddie Knoller. His story of fleeing from the Nazis in a race for his life across Europe, until his eventual
betrayal by a French girlfriend he had met in a Parisian nightclub, always captures their interest.

  During the first few years of the Anne Frank prison exhibition tour, when the Trust was still embryonic, I travelled to many of the prisons along with our guide trainer Herbert Levy, who was often assisted by a young volunteer from the German peace organization, Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP). ARSP volunteers spend a year in peace and social justice projects in several countries of the world, including the UK, the US and Poland, and are to be found working in many organizations that assist Holocaust survivors. We started working with ARSP volunteers in 1998, and have found them to be remarkable and deeply morally driven young people.

  Together we three, Herbert, myself and the volunteer, travelled to all kinds of prison establishments: high security, remand, young offenders’ institutions and open prisons. An open prison is mainly for white-collar criminals and those who are coming to the end of a long sentence. Prisoners are allowed outside to work during the day but must return by early evening. One such prisoner was Malcolm (name changed), who had been serving a long stretch for armed robbery. He was a charming and gregarious South Londoner and was the godson of one of Britain’s most notorious gangsters. As an avid history enthusiast, he loved his role and responsibility as a guide at our exhibition. Once, I invited him to come to the Home Office’s Diversity Week event in Westminster and he guided round two Labour government ministers, who were very impressed and appreciative.

  Malcolm was on a high afterwards and with a large grin on his face, beckoned me over to the corner of the room signalling he needed to have a quiet word with me. ‘Gill,’ he said in his chirpy South London accent. He sounded excited yet earnest. ‘Look, you know I’m going to go straight when I come out next month. But before I do, I’d like to do just one more armed robbery – because I want to raise funds for the Anne Frank Trust.’ I smiled and thanked him, but at the same time politely declined his kind offer.

  Steve Gadd joined the Trust in 2005 to take over the running and delivering of the prison project. A former rock guitarist, Steve had spent several years as a ‘roadie’ working for top music impresario Harvey Goldsmith. As well as providing the practical and logistical skills we needed to transport and erect the exhibition each time, the idea of educating prisoners appealed to him. Steve proved to be a natural, well respected by prisoners and prison staff alike. As well as conducting the guide training, Steve would organize writing workshops with the performance poet Leah Thorn, the daughter of a German-Jewish refugee from the Nazis. After one writing workshop a long-term prisoner told the Trust’s Chairman Daniel Mendoza, ‘This is the first time in fourteen years that my heart has been opened.’

  On the closing day of each exhibition visit, and often after the talk by the Holocaust survivor, a ‘Graduation Ceremony’ is held, where the visiting speaker presents certificates and offers congratulations to the prisoner peer guides to thank them for their work. In many cases this could be the first time these men or women have received a certificate for anything. We have heard that some prisoners wear their ‘Anne Frank Guide’ branded T-shirts for months afterwards, as a badge of honour.

  In Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire the prisoners wanted to say thank you to the Anne Frank Trust for coming to work with them, so in their craft workshop they created a wooden replica of the Anne Frank House. It was built exactly to scale and even contained a tiny hinged bookcase, stocked with miniature books and folders and able to swing open and closed, just like the one that concealed the entrance to the secret hiding place. It was so beautifully crafted that a second copy was made and shipped to South Africa to be shown at the Anne Frank exhibition at Constitution Hill, a former political prison in Johannesburg.

  In November 2012 we visited HMP Belmarsh, a high-security prison on the south bank of the Thames, where some of Britain’s most notorious criminals and terrorists are incarcerated. One long-term prisoner, who acted as an Anne Frank peer educator and was present when Eva Schloss gave a talk, followed up his experience by sending me a personally-addressed letter enclosing a donation of £50, as a Christmas donation for the Trust. This was a very large sum saved from his weekly remuneration for prison work, and we were deeply appreciative. Further research of the man’s name showed him to be ‘one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers’. There is no doubt in my mind that the Anne Frank exhibition and hearing Eva had made him reflect on what he could give back to society.

  A female prisoner whom we trained as a guide in HMP Holloway, a women’s prison in north London, found herself fascinated by learning about the Holocaust. She had come from an African country and at school had not studied anything about European history apart from its colonial impact. On her release she told the ex-offenders charity who were helping her to find employment that her dream job would be to work at the Anne Frank Trust. Steve gave her a glowing recommendation and she duly came to work for the Trust where she became a very important part of our administration team for over six years. She even went back into Holloway prison to give motivational talks to other prisoners.

  Alan Smith, a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, visited the Anne Frank project in HMP Wellingborough in 2011. He reported: ‘Casey and Ian [two of the inmates] had thrown themselves into it. They had learnt the material, erected the stands, which were laid out in the chapel. The officer in charge of them said “This has brought the men back to life – they have been themselves. It has been an oasis and given them back their humanity”.’

  Prisons are very tough environments, but I have often said that the governors, staff and chaplains who initiate bringing the Anne Frank educational project into their prison are some of the most visionary, empathetic and enlightened people I have met. One such is David Redhouse, the Deputy Governor of Wormwood Scrubs, who spoke at the closing event of the Anne Frank exhibition’s visit in 2014. The exhibition, along with its peer guiding programme, was invited into Wormwood Scrubs for three years running, and in each of those three visits Eva Schloss came to give the prisoners a one hour talk about her life. The visit in 2014 ended the most successful year to date for the Anne Frank exhibition; one in which it visited 16 prisons and trained 122 prisoners to be peer educators, who in turn educated over 3,000 prisoners.

  Introducing Eva and knowing the powerful story she was about to tell, Steve Gadd lightened the proceedings by explaining to the prisoners that he was actually brought up in west London just a few streets away from the prison, within sight of its fearsome looking grey stone walls. His father would apparently point to the walls and threaten the young Steve that if he didn’t behave he would end up behind there. Well, as he reminded the prisoners with a cheeky grin, he did, and on many occasion!

  Governor Redhouse explained why he and the senior management of Wormwood Scrubs believed it was so important to have the Anne Frank programme in the prison.

  We are a very diverse community, both prisoners and staff. We have Rastafarians, Catholics, Christians Jews, Buddhists – members of almost any religion you can think of. With so many differences there is obvious potential for divides. Having the Anne Frank exhibition here has helped prisoners to better understand the basic human values. Telling stories by Holocaust survivors is how we remind ourselves that history is really about people, not inanimate places or dates. The awful tragedy of a story like Anne Frank’s is what makes it possible for us to understand and engage with the true horror of the Holocaust instead of being lost in the incomprehensibly large numbers of those murdered.

  Ali (name changed) was one of six prisoners trained by Steve Gadd to be a peer guide for the exhibition on that visit. After serving a thirteen-month sentence for fraud, he said he thinks the experience is going to change his life.

  I was, for want of a better word, a career criminal, hacking computers. But being a guide for the exhibition has been great. I’ve been able to impart a bit of wisdom on the other prisoners looking round it. As a Muslim, it has given me the opportunity to talk with them
and challenge some of their ideas. They would say to me ‘but you are Muslim you should hate the Jews’. This whole exhibition has taught them something different. I know there are more things that unite Jews and Muslims than divide us. It was a privilege to be part of the Anne Frank exhibition, it has made me think differently.

  It is not only in adult establishments that the Anne Frank exhibition has been working. In Scotland, troubled teenagers, those who have broken the law and those who are at risk of placing themselves or others at harm, are sent to establishments known as Secure Units. In April 2012, the Times Educational Supplement sent its reporter Jackie Cosh to visit the Anne Frank project at the Good Shepherd Secure Unit, where she spoke to 17-year-old Yasmin, one of our peer educators. Yasmin was full of apposite questions such as, ‘How did Hitler get people to believe all these things?’ and ‘Why did the Jews not just change religion?’. Jackie Cosh also found Yasmin contemplating on what she would do to protect her own child in that situation.

  The Good Shepherd’s programmes manager Rhona McLaughlin explained her motivation for bringing the project, ‘The hope is that [the girls] will automatically start to question attitudes to prejudice. If you have that sense of injustice for Anne Frank, and others in the war, then hopefully you will have this for everyone. It plants the seeds for looking at other issues later on.’

  Because of data-protection issues around former prisoners it has been impossible to track the future career paths of the thousands of prisoners who have been involved in the Anne Frank project. Consequently, it has not been an easy project to receive government funding for, as successive Home Office and Justice departments have looked increasingly to evaluating the success of the penal system through the incidence of reoffending. We have relied on the support of individual funders and foundations, who have come along to prisons to see for themselves what we have been doing, and have helped subsidise the programme for the cash-strapped prisons.