Anne Frank - should people have heard about her?

[MilkTrayLimeBarrel]

Chatting with DH about where to go for a city break this spring. I suggested Amsterdam - lots to see, including tulips, canals, bikes and Anne Frank's house. He asked who she was? AIBU to think that everybody should have heard of her and what she stood for/did? I couldn't believe that he honestly had no idea who she was!

Not surprised at all.

Thanks @Frenchw1fe . The full extent of Nazi horrors continues to be revealed but Anne Frank's story has been well known internationally for decades. So yes, he is my age and ignorant.

Apologies if this was already mentioned but there is a special showing of a movie based on Anne Frank's life starring Helen Mirren next week in cinemas www.annefrankparallelstories.com/

I am not surprised. I expect there are many people who have areas of ignorance. Have you not seen those end of election snippets where they go into pubs/random places and people cant recognise the main 3 party leaders.
My sil had never heard of Diane Abbot(she has many interests and a full life, but is not into politics). I also have a friend who is highly educated(formally), but admitted that until her mid 20s she thought Jamaica was in Africa!!!

It's about being in his 50s. Pre internet. Pre rolling 24 hour news. 3 channels on tv. Films about the war every Sunday. And still missing something that was regularly referenced.

What I find curious is how much discussion is about what was their school curriculum. Do we stop learning at 16/18?

Exactly, @Winifredgoose!!

Is that a joke or a typo? You could leave school at 16 but not before.
Actually dh 58 was 15 when he left school, he was an August baby and started his job before he was 16..
As I said above history teaching in my generation was really poor. I can remember the Vikings in primary. When we started secondary we did something called Integrated studies. We did one year of history in 3rd year then had only to drop it for olevels as limited choice

It's not about what you learned at school. There was no internet, TV was your only audiovisual entertainment and there were only 3 channels. Because it was a topic to do with what happened about 30/40 years earlier, the war was on TV all the time - particularly weekends. Even if you told yourself "I am bored of it and want to do something/anything else", you simply cannot have been anywhere near a TV and not known about it. 30/40 years ago from today was the 80s and 90s.

You would be surprised at some of the things that people really don’t know. I went on holiday with a friend many years ago, who was nominally RC, and she actually asked me in all seriousness, ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ I was absolutely speechless.

But yes I agree that not knowing who Anne Frank was isn’t something I could imagine anyone not knowing, not someone of that age anyway.

The raising of the school leaving age to 16 was in 1973 or 4. You'd have to have been born before the late '50s to have left at 15 (late summer babies not included.)

you simply cannot have been anywhere near a TV

Which is possible. We didn't have one until 1986 and I wasn't the only one from a TV-free household at school (though it was sufficiently unusual that I can still name the other girls who didn't have them.) I am pretty well-read, though.

Re read her diary recently as DD’s history teacher lent it to her, think it’s fantastic writing, especially from one so young.

Both my girls read her diary at school, I remember her dad being interviewed on Blue Peter when I was a kid. Very surprised anyone born in the U.K. over 12 or so hasn't heard of her

All of you saying op's dh is ignorant I assume you've all heard of the massacre at Oradour sur Glane.
642 French civilians killed by the Nazis in 1944 in one day.
The burned out village is a permanent memorial.

Heard of it, visited it, read up on it, it is a lot more complicated than that, about 20 'Nazis' were French citizens from Alsace.

Most of the 200 defendants were in East Germany and never stood trial.

BTW for anyone who read Anne's diary as a child, a newer, reeditied version was released a few years ago.

I think the 'new' bits were the more personal things that wouldn't have been published earlier eg things like starting her periods.

And it has been edited, Anne herself edited it and changes were made to publications when it was translated, eg the first translation into German changes the word'Germans' to 'Nazis'.

I went to an independent school & this was in the mid-1980s.
We read Anne Frank's diaries in English Lit at the same time as studying Nazi Germany & the Holocaust in History. This was in 3rd year Senior school (age 12-13?) before we did our options for O levels so everyone learnt about it.
Learning about the events in Europe in the first half of the 20th century was seen as important particularly as there was a memorial to former pupils who had died during both wars.

The George Stevens film version of the diary is on today, Saturday on BBC Two now if anyone is interested. I’ve missed the start but didn’t notice it in TV guide until now.

Apparently Audrey Hepburn was asked to play Anne in that film but said she couldn't do it, she spent the War in the Netherlands and it was just too close for comfort.

I remember seeing it on tv when I was young so maybe that's how I know who Anne was.

Oradour sur Glane is the opening shot of the 1973 series, The World At War

Brief shot of a 5 year old Anne Frank on the balcony of her new flat.

When I’ve watched the film, I want to change the ending, it’s like watching Kennedy being shot; you know what is going to happen and you can’t stop it.
I know it’s sounds crass, but if it had only been the Frank family hiding in those tiny rooms they would have maybe had a better chance, they were better people than I would have been , in that situation I would have only had my family. I said this to my DS when we visited the house and he felt differently, he would have had more people in the place, he is a better person than me.

The Franks and van Pels were in business together. They couldn’t have gone it alone. It wasn’t the reason why they were betrayed.
They later made room for the other guy as it was literally death for those who couldn’t hide.

While learning about individual details of what went on during the Holocaust is important, and documentary evidence such Anne's diary is an incredibly important resource to use against Holocaust deniers and also to bring home the level of terror inflicted by the Nazi regime, the really important lesson about the Holocaust is the way it arose - how it gathered form, what it came from, the seeds from which it germinated, how those beginnings were nurtured and allowed to take the form they eventually took, and how ordinary people participated in perpetrating it and what it is in human nature that makes hatred and genocide a part of human history. Many of the suspects in the betrayal of the Franks and van Peels were Dutch. Their possible motives are varied. Many - perhaps the majority - of people outside of Germany were openly anti-Semitic in the pre-war years and for over a thousand years before that. Many people and organisations in conquered Europe enthusiastically assisted the Nazis in carrying out the Final Solution. This wasn't a German malaise.

If the DH understands the dangers of racism and prejudice in general, and understands that there is a difference between what is legal and what is morally right, then he's excused from knowing specific details or knowing about specific people.

Omg...had to resurrect this thread. I am off to the movie I mentioned above.....husband just asked who Anne Frank is. Don't worry I have got my kids 7, 9 and 11 to educate him.