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!

Honestly - do some people close their minds to knowledge after school!?

it explains a lot...

Joseph Smith, Jr.
I only knew that one courtesy of South Park

Honestly - do some people close their minds to knowledge after school

I suppose it depends on what knowledge people value?

What people learn in the National Curriculum or what people learned at school in the 1980s isn't really relevant to OP's dh though, if he is mid fifties.

If he is British through and through and in his mid 50s, then I AM surprised he hasn't hear of her.

I wasn’t taught about her at school. I’ve not read the book or watched a programme about her. I still know who she is though.

I think there are some people who are actually not that interested in the world around them and take very little in behind areas of immediate interest to them. If you use Anne Frank as an example, even if you had not studied history, you would come across references to her in books, newspapers, populate culture.

A list of the 100 most significant figures in history. Theres a few names on there I dont know. Is it just me or does everyone else know all 100?

No, only 98.
But Ali the Sufi guy, & Grover Cleveland are now on my radar - thank you internet :)

Ye dogs, Cleveland did a Woody Allen & married his adopted daughter!

@JamieVardysHavingAParty

Let me help you with that knowledge-gap

I’m mid 50s , wasn’t taught at school, but watched plenty of tv progs about her. My parents were alive during the war and often mentioned her name.

Funny thing, BananaTaffy I've definitely come across the founder of the LDS in books and popular culture too, but it evidently hasn't gone in fully, because I don't recognise him out of context. I think I'm a bit more close-minded to stuff I don't care about than I thought.

You'd have thought so

It's unusual for 50-ish year old people not to have heard of her.

Agree, I'm amazed he got to 50 and has never heard of her.

I am nearly 53, and I am was never taught anything about The Holocaust at school.

However I discovered Anne Frank when I was around 8/9 and read her diary then. I've gone on to read countless survivors stories and also books about hunting the Nazis, can't count how many documentaries I've seen.

There is a documentary/drama being shown in cinemas for the night of 26th of January, in what seems to be every English town.

Only two or three in Scotland though, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dunoon, which is infuriating as I live in Aberdeen so cant see it.

I wasn’t taught about her at school but reading Zlata’s diary after seeing Zlatas story on Blue Peter led me to learn about Anne Frank myself so I can understand.

There is a documentary/drama being shown in cinemas for the night of 26th of January, in what seems to be every English town.

ah yes, with helen mirren narrating i think.

Oh I could have written this both my father in law and a work colleague did not know who she was !!

Yoi can be surprised though.

My FIL was buried at Highgate Cemetary. As we went to his grave we passed Karl Marx's headstone. My SIl asked who Kark Marx was. That did surprise me, not least because she did economics at Cambridge so was hardly uneducated!

noooooo!

Definitely on the curriculum then, when your DH was at school, and still is! It has never 'not' been taught as part of the history curriculum in both KS2 and in high school (I'm your DHs age AND a teacher 🤷‍♀️)...and even if he (was under a stone!) somehow missed it, to have reached his age and not even have heard of Anne Frank is, quite honestly, unbelievable and, honestly, just ignorant. I could not be in a relationship with someone so uneducated and ignorant...I just couldn't!! I'd be embarrassed.

I'm often shocked and dismayed by how very uninformed, about really quite basic history, grown arsed adults appear to be sometimes! Anyone with half an ounce of curiosity about their own country would surely have tried to educate themselves about something so fundamentally important as WWII at some point in their lives!

Posters saying that 'lots' of people in the world won't have heard of her...well of course! But these people would be either way too young (under 7...WWII is taught from Year 3 on, in most British curriculum schools) or from countries with ZERO connection to WWII. For anyone else there is simply NO excuse!!! Really...none!

To put this in perspective...I've just texted my 8 year old DGS to ask if he knew who Anne Frank was...his reply was 'yeah the Jewish girl who hid from Hitler, then got caught...she died didn't she? And all her family died!' I separately asked my 30 year old DD (so we have a 3-generational experience here!) and she sent me this:

"I know I'm blonde mum, but I'm not stupid! Can't you remember my homework in year 7 when I had to pretend to be hiding from the Nazis and write a diary for a week in 'the style of' her? I wanted to sleep in Nana's attic 😂"

I can only assume your DH is either not very bright (didn't retain much of his earlier education) or simply isn't intellectually curious. Neither of which are particularly attractive to be honest 🤷‍♀️

I know about Anne Frank but never rrad her diary until last year aged 40 going to Amsterdam on holiday. I didn't manage to get tickets for her house but walked past it and that was evocative enough for me.

Theres a jewish museum that would be worth visiting if hes really ill educated about the holocaust.

Or there is a walking tour of Anne Frank's Amsterdam.

I love Amsterdam.

BananaTaffy

Ohhhh my. Ohhhh my goodness. A load of cultural references to Golden Plates suddenly make sense.

I thought everyone had heard of Ann Frank.

I can understand if people don't know details re her sister Margot and parents, or the other people they shared their hiding place with, but Ann Frank herself - i truly thought she was universally recognisable as a "Face" of the Holocaust

No, 99.9% won't have heard of her.

And another 50s person for whom 2nd world war wasn't taught.

Yes, of course have heard of her (and read the book) - but really only because of the canonisation of her story. Never quite understood why her story, over and above the 6 million, caught the imagination.

@BananaTaffy - ha, I cannot access. List apparently not available in my country (England);- bizarre!

But surely for people in their 50's (which I am), WWII was relatively recent history! In my childhood it had only been 30 years ago, that's like someone now saying they've never been taught about the 80's!
It was living memory still, I remember teachers at primary school referencing the war a lot.