The Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is an 81-acre educational park “designed to actively engage visitors to think, to talk with one another, and to respond to the human rights issues we face in our community, our country, and our world.”
Anne Frank (1929-1945) was born in Frankfurt, Germany. Following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Anne and her family relocated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. When she was 11, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, enforcing antisemitic laws on the local Jews. She tried to live her life as if everything was regular, detailing everything in a diary she received for her 13th birthday.
A year later, the conditions for Jews got even worse. When her sister Margot got a summon to a work camp, the family escaped their home and went underground in a secret annex at her father’s company building; their only connection to the outside world was through several loyal employees of her father.
In August 1944, the German secret police discovered the annex and sent all its residents to Auschwitz. Later, Anne and Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne, at 15, and Margot, at 18, died of typhus.
When the war ended, Anne’s father, Otto, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam. He discovered that his former secretaries had found and kept Anne’s diary. Following Anne’s dream to become a writer and aspiring to show the world how the war affected children, he published Anne’s diary. The book, titled The Diary of a Young Girl, became a worldwide bestseller and has since been translated into over 70 languages, becoming one of the most famous written testimonials of a Holocaust victim.
The idea for the memorial was initiated in 1995 when a traveling exhibit about Anne Frank arrived in Boise and drew thousands of visitors. In the following years, a group of human rights and community activists, alongside the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, raised funds to establish the memorial. They chose Idaho Falls architect Kurt Karst to design it and dedicated it on August 16, 2002. Thousands of visitors visit the memorial each year from all over the country.
It comprises several elements; its centerpiece is an amphitheater from which the visitor can view the sculpture of the secret annex where Anne and her family hide. A life-sized bronze statue of Anne, created by Greg Stone, stands inside the annex, depicting her standing on a chair, peeking out of the window of her hiding place while holding her famous diary in her hand.
At the back of the annex, there is a stone bookcase that simulates the movable bookcase that disguised the entrance to the secret annex. On the bookcase, there are quotes taken from Anne’s diary.
Behind the annex is the Marilyn Shuler classroom for human rights, named after the renowned human rights leader and advocate who co-founded the memorial and served as a board member of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights. In the open classroom, there is a showcase of the history of human rights in Idaho.
Next to the classroom stands the Spiral of Injustice sculpture. Created by Ken McCall, it represents the harm and injustice that can spark from a single word.
A few steps away, there’s the Butterfly Garden, watching over the Boise River. In the garden, there is a stone plaque inscribed with the poem “The Butterfly,” written by Pavel Friedmann during his imprisonment at the Terezin concentration camp before he was murdered in Auschwitz.
In front of the annex, there is the Rose Beal legacy garden. It contains a stone installation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a sapling of an Anne Frank Chestnut Tree from Amsterdam, and the Bethine and Frank Church Writing Table; the table honors Senator Frank Church, who was a prominent figure in the passage of the first Civil Rights Bill, and his wife Bethine, who was a human rights activist. On the table, there is a bronze representation of Anne’s diary.
On the west side of the memorial is a 180-foot Quote Wall. It contains a series of sandstone with quotations of people from various times and regions. Some of them are of famous people, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela, while others are of unknown people, including children, formerly enslaved people, and Holocaust survivors.
Although this memorial is about love and acceptance, it was vandalized twice in 2017 and 2020.
Several places worth a visit are a short distance from the memorial, such as the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, Boise Art Museum, the Idaho Black History Museum, and the Oregon Trail Memorial Bridge.
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