The Anne Frank Memorial Garden at Arboretum Park commemorates Anne Frank, a Jewish Holocaust victim and the victims of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank (1929-1945) was only four when she and her Jewish family moved from their hometown of Frankfurt, Germany, to Amsterdam in the Netherlands following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Seven years later, the Germans invaded the Netherlands and applied antisemitic laws on Jewish citizens.
The following year, after various attempts to escape, the Frank family had no choice but to go into hiding in the company building of her father. Anne, her sister Margot, and her parents crammed together with four more people at a 450 square feet annex. During this time, Anne documented her daily life in a diary she got for her 13th birthday. On August 4th, 1944, the secret German police found them. All of the annex’s residents were sent to Auschwitz, the last place Anne saw her parents. Later, she and her sister were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where both died of typhus only a few weeks before the war ended. Anne was 15 and Margot 18.
When the war ended, her father, the only survivor of the family, got her diary from his former secretaries, who found it after the police raid on the annex. He published it in 1947 with the title The Diary of a Young Girl. The book and Anne became worldwide famous.
The idea for an Anne Frank memorial was initiated in 2004 by Councilwoman Marlene Budd. It took four years before Steven Dubner Landscaping was chosen to bring it to life. Drawings made by elementary school students are integrated into their designs.
The garden, dedicated on June 13th, 2010, incorporates symbolic elements from Anne Frank’s life, including a cement infused with glass that memorializes Kristallnacht. The night in November 1938, synagogues and Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria were vandalized following the Third Reich regime order.
A circular pathway surrounds the garden and leads to a statue created by Thea Lanzisero. The sculpture is in the shape of a little girl’s dress, made of white laced steel, representing vulnerability and fearlessness and inspired by designs from Anne Frank’s time. While the steel is stiff and protective, the lace pattern is soft and sensitive, much like Anne Frank herself.
Click here to read about more statues honoring Anne Frank in the world.
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