Exhibit shows Anne Frank and family before the horror

Photographs depict quiet moments

By David Schaffer
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam
This photo of Anne Frank was taken by her father, Otto, in 1932, while the family still lived in Frankfurt, Germany, years before they went into hiding in Amsterdam.

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam
Anne's sister Margot bathing in a sink in 1927.

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam
Anne Frank, right, with Sanne Lederman, center, and Eva Goldberg, two friends from her neighborhood in Amsterdam.

The story of Anne Frank's experiences with her family during World War II is one of the best-known real-life stories in the world. It is therefore easy to overlook the fact that the Frank family lived a normal and contented life for many years before going into hiding and eventually being captured by the Nazis.

A new photo exhibit, "Anne Frank: A Private Photo Album," at the Kraushaar Galleries in midtown Manhattan, sheds light on this largely unexplored time in the life of the Frank family.

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam This photo of Anne Frank was taken by her father, Otto, in 1932, while the family still lived in Frankfurt, Germany, years before they went into hiding in Amsterdam.

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam Anne's sister Margot bathing in a sink in 1927.

AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam Anne Frank, right, with Sanne Lederman, center, and Eva Goldberg, two friends from her neighborhood in Amsterdam.

Anne's father, Otto, owned a Leica camera that was of very good quality for its time. Being a doting father who also had a great interest in photography, he snapped many childhood photos of Anne and her older sister Margot, along with other family members and friends and neighbors of the family. These photos make up the majority of the works in the exhibit, with facsimiles of family photo albums and the famous diary itself also included among the displayed items.

The exhibit is part of a year-long celebration of Anne Frank's 75th birthday on June 12. It is sponsored by The Anne Frank Center USA in New York City and The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Both organizations are dedicated to fighting prejudice and intolerance, as well as educating people about the holocaust.

The Anne Frank Center USA executive director Elizabeth Feerick explains how this exhibit differs from other events and programs presented by the center.

"We have five different exhibits that are strictly educational. This is a type of exhibit that we've never had," she said. "We hope this appeals to an arts audience, photography buffs and at the same time allow people who use Anne Frank as a vehicle to teach human rights to enhance the educational process."

Typical of a parent's pictures, Frank's photos of his children are mostly endearing and sentimental. Both Margot and Anne are shown in cribs, playpens, baby bathtubs and carriages. One photo shows Margot holding Anne on her lap just a few days after Anne was born.

In another, Anne and Margot pose in Halloween costumes, dressed as a clown and a gypsy, respectively. There are also photos of extended family members, such as Anne's grandmother, Alice Frank, and her cousins Stephen and Bernd Elias. These family members lived in Switzerland, and Anne maintained frequent correspondence with them until the time her family went into hiding.

Anne and Margot's growth is pointedly demonstrated through the photos, taken both in the Franks' native Germany and Amsterdam, where they moved after the Nazi takeover.

Only a few of the photos include images of Otto, although his shadow is conspicuously present in others. However, the single biggest photo in the exhibit is a portrait of Otto by photographer Arnold Newman in 1960. The background is the attic of the secret annex where the family lived in hiding, just one day after it was opened as a public museum.

Otto's emotions show clearly, and the wall panel explains how, just after this picture was taken, the sound of tower bells ringing in the nearby Westertoren Church led both men to break down and cry, thereby ending the photography session after just this one shot. The Westertoren bells are a vivid image described by Anne in her diary.

Powerful as the portrait of Otto is, the overall mood created by the exhibit is more serene, even joyous, especially compared to the experiences that followed for the Franks and the others discovered with them in hiding.

Steve Press, a Dutchess County Community College theater professor, has a long association with Anne Frank. He was a cast member in the original Broadway production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" in the 1950s and has since directed several productions of the play, including one earlier this year at St. Bart's Playhouse in Manhattan.

Press points out that the scenes in the photographs show that the Franks were "a simple, wonderful family who were doing harm to no one."

Students from Middle School 54 on W. 107th Street who visited the exhibit also commented on how the exhibit showed the family living very differently from how they were described in the diary.

"They look peaceful in the pictures." said 14-year-old Ji Eun Kim about the Franks.

Renald Cera, 13, enjoyed seeing "how Anne grew and how her life changed when she was young."