N.S. gets glimpse of Anne Frank's world

Organizers are hoping a travelling exhibit based on the story of Anne Frank will open the eyes of young people to the legacy of intolerance.

Anne Frank in the World opened Tuesday in Sydney, N.S.,and moves to Halifax later in the month.

It uses excerpts from the Diary of Anne Frank, the true story of a Jewish teenager who spent two years hiding from the Nazis in aconcealed part of her father's Amsterdam factory.

Frank and her family were eventually betrayed and she died in a concentration camp, but her diary is used the world over to tell a tale of intolerance and its terrible consequences.

It's the first time the exhibit, from the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, has been shown in Atlantic Canada.

Hillary Eddy Stippleman, a museum educator with the Anne Frank Center in New York, works with volunteer tour guides to show them how to get the museum's message across to schoolchildren.

"I really hope that they will get to know this young, strong, vivacious person, Anne Frank," she told CBC Radio.

"The more you get to know her, the more tragic her loss becomes."

Because the diary is written from the point of view of a teenager, with a teenager's interest and concerns, it seems fresh to young visitors, she said.

The diary, saved by a friend andpublished in 1947 by Anne's father, who survived the war, has been translated into 67 languages and sold millions of copies.

The exhibitfeatures excerpts from the diary, as well as historic photos and a documentary film.

There is also a model of the cramped annex where the 13-year-old Jewish girl hid from the Nazis for two years.

The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission was instrumental in bringing the exhibit tothe province.

"When you stop and think about it, about how many people have been influenced by her one voice over all those generations. For me that is amazing," said the commission's acting head, Michael Noonan.

The display contains historical information about Adolf Hitler's rise to power and examples of other human rights violations since the Second World War.

Noonan said the Nova Scotia display has been customized to include some local examples of intolerance. It includes information about Africville, a black area of Halifax that was destroyed in the 1950s,the history of the Acadians and some stories of First Nations people.

Anne Frank in the World runs in Sydney's Victoria Parkuntil Oct. 15 before moving to the Museum of Natural History in Halifax from Oct. 24 to Jan. 28.