H.E. Aviv Shir-On, Ambassador of Israel and H.E. Hector Horacio Salvador, Ambassador of Argentina.
By John Dunkelgrün.
No name in the world evokes the agony and the suffering as a result of racial and religious discrimination more than that of Anne Frank, the 16 year old Jewish girl that after more than two years of hiding from the Nazi’s was deported, together with her family, to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp and murdered.
Her very name is iconic from Japan to Argentina, from California to New Zealand, in the struggle against all sorts of discrimination. Every year millions of visitors from around the globe visit her hiding place, the “Anne Frank Huis” in Amsterdam.
It is run by the Anne Frank Stichting, an organization devoted to teaching about the Holocaust and generally about discrimination. It teaches teachers and disseminates course material. Its aim is to keep the memory alive of Anne Frank and of the horrors that killed her and to make people aware of the dangers of discrimination in any form.
To further this goal, the Anne Frank Stichting has been instrumental at the establishment ten years ago of the Centro Ana Frank in Buenos Aires. This center has broadly the same goals as the Amsterdam organization and has reached thousands with its programmes. One of its activities is an annual visit to the Anne Frank Huis by a group of young people selected after an essay writing competition to which many hundreds enter every year.
This year the Argentinean Ambassador, H.E. Horacio Salvador, and Sra. Jane Berger de Salvador invited the group of winners to a special event at the Residence. The group was led by the President of the Centro, Sr. Hector Shalom and the coordinator of its educational programmes, Rabbi Silvina Chemen.
The programme started with the very emotional testimonies by Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp of The Hague and his wife Mrs. Sira Soetendorp. Rabbi Soetendorp told Mrs. Sira Soetendorp that when he was a little baby a Gestapo squad entered his parents’ house and would have taken them away if not for the officer in charge who, after seeing him as a baby, said: “What a pity he is a Jewish baby”. His father replied that he was glad it was a Jewish baby because he would always know that his father was not a murderer.
Thereupon the officer swore and shouted while taking his men out of this “stinking Jewish hole” and vowing to come back to arrest them the next day. In this way, he gave them the possibility to flee. Rabbi Soetendorp said that if the heart of a single man could be moved to save a baby, there was still hope for humanity, even in the very worst of times. It was reminiscent of the Talmudic saying that “He who saves a single life is as of he has saved the whole world”.
After a musical interlude, a short film was shown made from a play “La Ventana del Arbol y Ana Frank“, the window of the tree and Anne Frank. In it, the lovely Actress Zoe Hochbaum who was present plays Anne Frank writing and rereading her diary, philosophizing about the world and its many injustices. Again the play, the movie, effectively and emotionally warn us about the dangers of prejudice, discrimination, and alienation.
The event was concluded by a reception in the lush gardens of the Residence, where the guests, among which were many ambassadors, the delegation from the Centro Ana Frank and the Anne Frank Stichting and rabbis from The Hague and Amsterdam were treated to Argentinean specialties and superb wines.
Hats off to Ambassador Salvador and his Embassy team for hosting this annual delegation and helping to further the efforts of these wonderful and regrettably very necessary organizations.
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Photography by John Dunkelgrün and GNS BW.
