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!

@Bungalowbella as a teacher, I'm sure you're aware that there wasn't actually a "curriculum" as such until 1988, several years after the OP's DH left compulsory education, so Anne Frank couldn't have been on it.

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!

I agree. I’m nearly 50, growing up in the 70s London there were sitill unrebuilt bombsites around London. The war was a recent memory. It’s unlikely that his parents didn’t experience the war.

Yanbu. I read her story when I was in high school, then visited the museum last year.

I dunno it’s a bit like not having heard of Hitler

Really? really?

A few more I have heard of with out study. Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, Grace Darling, Elizabeth Fry, John Wesley, George Fox, Sterling Moss, Lester Piggott.

I didn’t know about Anne Frank until I was 13 and I read her diary.

No one ever mentioned it in any school lesson as I recall. I had no idea until the last paragraph that it was real and not fiction and I had no idea she died, either.

I didn’t have parents who taught me things like that so I didn’t know, but I found out by accident because I read a lot. If i didn’t read I could easily not know.

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!

Who did she think wrote Das Kapital?

I don't think I ever did Anne Frank at school, I just always seem to have known about her. From very young I think, because the thing about her hiding behind a bookcase - I took it literally, as young children do, and at first, thought they were all crouched behind a bookcase when they were found by the Nazis. I read her book at some point in my early 20's I think, because I thought I should. (I didn't still think they were all crouched behind a bookcase when I picked up the book!)

I’m always surprised what people don’t know and indeed what they do know. Nobody knows everything and everybody do they?
I used to work with a young woman who thought Nelson Mandela was on top of Nelson’s column.
Another one said if we’ve evolved from apes why don’t baby apes turn into humans. 🤷‍♀️

Some people didn't like talking about WWII in the 1970s though, for many reasons, or found it difficult to express it in a way a child can understand due to how their own trauma affected them.

I'm shocked at this

Really? really?

It was tongue in cheek but yeah.

WWII is pretty much - Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, the Blitz and Anne Frank.

Aw well everyone knows Charles de Gaulle, in the words of Renè the cafe owner he is ze one with ze big ooter

Good moaning!

He must have lived under a rock and been raised by wolves!!! Everyone knows who Anne frank was (or so I thought until reading this). I seriously think he needs to read up. Granted I did about her at school but it wasn't GCSE year, I think it was year 8 or something but we did ww2. If I hadn't learnt about her at school they covered her on blue peter more than once and other programs in recent years, it's hard to not know about her.

@Puds 11. Who's Justin Bieber?

I don't remember hearing about her at school. There was a documentary film on her on the TV when I was 13 or so, and that's how I heard of her.

I wouldn't blame anybody for not having heard of her. Nobody knows everything.

I also didn't study WWII or I at school - just the way the syllabus fell but ended up doing Tudor's and Stuart's 3 times . I'm 46 and WWII was much more talked about when I was at school (70s/80s), as so many more parent/grandparents had lived through it, but I hadn't heard of her then. It was so recent, it didn't really feel like history (though clearly was as my sister studied it for A Level).

I first became aware of her diaries when interest massively picked up in the 90s - after Schindlers List was released.
So I wouldn't judge someone for not knowing it - I have noted the real focus on WWII in reading lists in Y5 onwards that wasn't necessarily the same when I was younger.

Not knowing something because it's not on the curriculum is nonsense. Surely, most of what we know comes from a natural desire for knowledge. Don't most of us have that?

Absolutely. This comes up on so many threads - "We weren't taught x at school, that's why I've never heard of it." There aren't enough hours in the school day to teach everything, and so much of what we know comes from elsewhere.

I had to explain to a colleague a while ago who Richard III was, and this was just after he'd been dug up and was all over the news

How very odd, OP. You’ve triggered a memory. This is, I suspect, the reason I was first aware of Anne Frank.

I think it might have been in one of the annuals, which might be why I remembered all these years later!

www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blue-peter--anne-frank/zrj247h

I once read a book by her step sister. As far as I remember they didn't meet - but Eva lived through the camps and told her story and I think I remember the Russians liberated them (I could be wrong I read it more than 30 years ago)

Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank
Many know the tragic story of Anne Frank, the teen whose life ended at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. But most people dont know about Eva Schloss, Annes playmate and stepsister. Though Eva, like Anne, was taken to Auschwitz at the age of 15, her story did not end there. / This incredible memoir recounts without bitterness or hatred the horrors of war, the love between mother and daughter, and the strength and determination that helped a family overcome danger and tragedy. / Powerful. A heartbreaking and inspirational account of personal triumph. / Publishers Weekly / A tale worth telling. . . . It picks up where Anne Franks diary ends. / New York Daily News

The girls played together as children, and after the war Eva's mother married Otto Frank. (the reviews)

I think the reason people are saying 'we weren't taught x in school' is because others are saying 'surely everyone learned about her in school'....

I know who Anne Frank is, although I'm not sure where I first learned of her from (it may actually have been school), but I had no idea there were film or TV adaptations of her story. It's easy to miss stuff.

You’d have to be horrifically thick or to have parachuted in from another solar system not to have encountered Anne Frank as an element in general knowledge, even if your knowledge only extended to her being a Jewish girl in hiding during WWII.

i had a little gasp.learning about her changed my life and im not over exaggerating.i know people say there are so many more just like her.but for me the horror of it was told and shared as a excelent gateway to then learning more.she represents so many.and for me it did just that.when i learnt of anne franks i was taken in by it and it got me into that part of history and all i wanted to do was learn more.for me it was the start of my love for that part of histroy.
but id then say when i was older it was schindlers list that really did it for me.