As an amateur scholar of the Holocaust, I have agonized over whether and how much information children should receive about the devastating antisemitism that spawned the destruction of 6 million Jewish lives during World War II. Given the 337% increase in antisemitic incidents in the United States alone after Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,400 innocents and took over 200 hostages on Oct. 7, I harbor no more doubts. We must teach our youngest children about the past, and we must teach them well.
There is no better time to start than on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In my home, Brad Meltzer’s graphic biography I am Anne Frank has been my preferred source for talking about the Holocaust with elementary- and preschool-aged children. Illustrator Christopher Eliopoulos vividly depicts increasing Nazi restrictions that affect school-aged Anne and the shrinking of Anne’s world when she and seven others moved into the Secret Annex behind a bookcase in her father’s former Amsterdam office.
Even while handling the details of such a difficult history, Meltzer avoids overwhelming a young reader. “I know it sounds scary,” he writes after Anne and her family are forced to mark themselves with yellow Stars of David. “But this isn’t a story about fear. It’s a story about hope.”
Meltzer brings readers to Anne’s favorite space, a window in the attic where Anne looked out on a large horse chestnut tree as it changed with the seasons. Children see illustrated excerpts from the real journal Anne kept throughout her time in hiding. “As long as this exists,” the journal reads, “this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how sad can I be?”
I am Anne Frank contains multiple discussion points for parents to address serious topics with their children. Meltzer offers a brief introduction to the Jewish religion and the growth of antisemitism under Adolf Hitler. He also addresses the numerous everyday heroes who violated Nazi rulings to help the Franks. They remind readers of the universal importance of standing up for those who are being treated unfairly. Children also learn that, like Anne, they “can always find light in the darkest places. That’s what hope is. It’s a fire within you. You decide when to light it. And when it burns bright … nothing can put it out.”
Meltzer’s retelling of Anne’s story ends before German police discover the Secret Annex and arrest those living there. Anne’s death and the deaths of 6 million Jews receive only brief mentions. The author gives more attention to the fate of Anne’s beloved horse chestnut tree. Though the tree died in 2010, Meltzer notes that saplings were grown from its seeds and now bloom around the world.
As of 2019, 13 of these saplings have taken root across the U.S. They were planted on the West Front Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington; at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana; at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California; at Liberty Park and the United Nations Headquarters in New York City; at the Southern Cayuga School District in Cayuga, New York; at the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center in Seattle, Washington; at the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts; at Central High School and the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas; at the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan; at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise, Idaho; and at the University of Iowa Pentacrest in Iowa City, Iowa.
For families of small children, these saplings offer a physical location to honor the Holocaust by remembering the resilience of a young Jewish girl who believed in the goodness of people. Like Meltzer’s book, they offer a leaping-off place for conversations about the consequences of hate and the power of a single person to resist it.
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Adults must consider the matter more deeply. In Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, an entry from May 22, 1944, mentions that news had reached Annex residents about antisemitism spreading wildly across Europe, even among those who previously harbored no feelings of ill will toward Jews. “I hope one thing only, and that is that this hatred of the Jews will be a passing thing,” Anne wrote.
No passing thing, antisemitism is once again spreading at an alarming pace. Educating ourselves and talking to our children about the uncomfortable truths of hatred is an important first step to fulfilling Anne’s noble dream of tolerance.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.