Last week, Mr. Sandler's students visited the Center for Jewish History to experience the incredible new exhibition on the life of Anne Frank, which reviewers have praised for its “striking design, rare artifacts, and unusually intimate storytelling.” One of the most powerful elements is the first full-scale replica of the Secret Annex ever displayed in the United States, allowing students to grasp the confined spaces in which the Frank family hid for more than two years.
Curators worked closely with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, bringing several extraordinary objects to New York for the first time—including family photographs, personal letters, and items from the Annex that reveal intimate details of Anne and Margot’s daily lives.
The exhibition also places Anne’s story within the broader context of the Holocaust. Students explored sections on German-Jewish life before 1933, the rise of fascism in the Netherlands, and the machinery of genocide—from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Einsatzgruppen to the Wannsee Conference. This framing helped students understand how the Frank family’s experience fit within the larger destruction of European Jewry.
Throughout the visit, students engaged thoughtfully with the material, asking insightful questions about the Franks' choices, the fate of Amsterdam’s Jewish community, and the historical forces shaping Europe in the 1930s and 40s. It was an unforgettable opportunity to connect the personal and the historical, and to understand anew why Anne Frank’s voice continues to resonate so deeply.
At the conclusion of the visit, every student who participate in the ship received the newest edition of The Diary of Anne Frank! Included is a picture of her room she shared with a fussy 55 yr old Jewish dentist Fritz Pfeffer for almost two years.
