>> Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Thank you for joining us for this Palmetto Scene special remembering the Holocaust.

In this episode, we'll listen to the woman who found Anne Frank's diary after the secret annex was discovered by the Nazis.

We'll find out what it means to be an upstander, and we'll also take you inside the University of South Carolina's Anne Frank Center, where we'll explore its impact on students, educators and the community.

We begin now with a special vocal performance of "“El Malei Rachamim"” by Cantor Rabbi Levi Marrus.

♪ Rabbi singing Hebrew song ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues song ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues song ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi song ending ♪ >> Every year on the 4th of August, I close the curtains of my home and do not answer the doorbell and the telephone and it's the day that my Jewish friends were taken away.

I have never overcome that shock.

I left and admire them so much.

Two years, they had to live with eight people in a small place.

They had little food and were not allowed to go out.

They could not speak to their friends and family.

On the top of that came the fear every hour of the day.

I have no word to describe these people who were still always friendly and grateful.

Yes, I do have a word, heroes, true heroes.

There were people sometimes call me a hero.

I don't like it.

Because people should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.

I myself.

I'm just a very common person.

I simply had no choice.

I could foresee many, many sleepless nights, nights and a life filled with regret if I would refuse to help the friends, and this was not the kind of life I was looking forward to.

I could not save Anne's life.

However, I did save her diary, and by that I could help her most important dream to come true.

In her family, she tells us that she wants to live on after her death.

Now, her diary makes her really leaving home in a most powerful way.

♪ calming music ♪ Against the wall stands a replica bookshelf, perhaps, symbolically opening a passageway between two moments in time.

This table and chairs that games, magazines, and even household appliances survived the war.

And today help visitors transcend to a world were the Frank family and four others spent 761 days hiding from the Nazis, but they didn't do it alone.

In 2021, the University of South Carolina unveiled its partnership with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, making it one of only four official partner sites in the world.

<Ronald Leopold> We are proud and excited to welcome the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina as the official partner of the Anne Frank House in North America.

We've been working together for a long period of time with a group of excellent Holocaust educators and scholars in South Carolina.

Life Story of Anne Frank is of course a window into the past telling the story of a young girl in hiding during the Holocaust.

But it also encourages us to reflect on important questions for our own times, on who we are and even more important, who we want to be.

It taps into the question: What makes us human?

At the Anne Frank Center in Columbia, photos, video, quotes, and even some original artifacts are thoughtfully placed throughout the building.

A replica of Anne's diary sits on a period specific desk.

A bookshelf in another room showcases multiple editions of the diary in several languages.

And it's only a sampling of the more than 70 translations available to readers worldwide.

Dr. Doyle Stevick>> Our exhibit is called "Anne Frank: A History for Today" for a reason, and that is that Otto Frank insisted that we learn not just history lessons, but the lessons of history.

So it's important for us to think about what happened and what it means for us today.

A history for today suggests it still has relevance for us.

So we needed to step back, think about its meaning and how it relates to issues in the present.

And that's an invitation that we help students facilitate themselves.

<Dr.

Harris Pastides> So, while Anne Frank was a victim of the Holocaust, of course there is tyranny that exists today, around the world, not that far away, by the way, but also in remote parts of the world.

So we want children, to have a gentle introduction to the fact that the world is a beautiful and wonderful place, but at the same time, can be a dangerous and unjust place as well.

And we think they can leave here not only with education about the Holocaust and World War Two, but about a bit about their world today.

Dr. Doyle Stevick>> The Anne Frank House has an educational philosophy they call the three R's, remember, reflect and respond and to remember, we learned the history.

So we have two rooms dedicated to the timeline, what happened?

And then we have two rooms dedicated to reflection, and we reflect on themes such as, what does it mean to be an up stander to be a helper?

What motivates people to take on risk and danger to support others?

And what was life like and hiding?

And the third R is to respond.

And that's the idea that what we learn here should inspire our own actions into the future.

And we have two seminar rooms that we can use to use breakout educational activities and explore those kinds of questions.

Dr. Harris Pastides>> There are, the connections with American slavery are really profound.

And I think, without visiting this place, you might not be aware of them, but the exhibits show how Adolf Hitler was influenced by how the earlier Americans treated African people who were brought here to be enslaved.

Dr. Doyle Stevick>> And Mein Kampf is painful for us today for many reasons.

One of them is that he took the very worst parts of American history and held that up as his model for what he wanted Germany to be.

That included the gunning down as he put it of hundreds of thousands of Native American people, and especially in his view, a racial conception of citizenship which held Black Americans in a lower status.

Narrator>> By sharing Anne's legacy, the University of South Carolina's Anne Frank Center, seeks to inspire their commitment to never be bystanders, and instead stand up together against inequality wherever it may exist.

Ronald Leopold>> Anne's words help us to better understand the challenges of our own times.

Anne Frank was born in the same year as Dr. Martin Luther King in 1929, just a few months apart.

They both fell victim to racist ideologies.

But their dreams continue to inspire people all over the world and we're very excited that the Anne Frank Center and the University of South Carolina will help us to bring Anne's dreams to people all over the United States of America and Canada.

♪ Coy Gibson>> Ultimately, what it came down to was, how can I give back in a way that feels meaningful, and for me meaningful meant giving back to South Carolina, which gave so much to me, and, you know, I think because we work in it, so often, every day, it's easy to become normal, but, you know, it is an honor to, to remember what people like Anne and Martin Luther King stood for, but it's also paying it forward, you know, it's bringing about the world they talked about.

So, the opportunity that I have is special and unique.

I do not take it for granted, and for anyone else out there that's trying to find that why in their life, just keep at it, because you don't know where it's going to lead.

The idea that we have thousands of South Carolina school kids now I got to come here and see it.

Now I got to get the exhibits, because that added experience, there's no doubt that I think South Carolina can be a leader in this type of education.

Morgan Bailey>> Through undergraduate research, what they do is they essentially assess your interests and what you want to research, and then they find professors who are in similar fields, and they match you up, and so I got matched with a professor named Dr. Doyle Stevick, who was now our director here.

And we worked on research together.

And then he asked if I wanted to volunteer and be a part of these traveling exhibitions from the Anne Frank House, and I had no idea what he was talking about, but I said, sure, and I'd like to say that I started showing up and I've been showing up ever since.

So I volunteered with educational programming around the state.

I actually got the chance to take a traveling exhibit back to my hometown in Walterboro, South Carolina, a small town off of 95.

In 2014, I got to intern at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam for a summer, which was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

We organized an international youth conference for about 50 young people from 35 different countries all over the world, and as a small town girl who had never left the country before, it was just the most incredible experience, and so I came back and knew I wanted to be a part of this for a long time.

Diana Serhal>> I remember my first takeaways from the Anne Frank house when I just went there first as a tourist, and then when I just started working there.

I remember my first takeaways were, maybe I shouldn't complain about every little thing in my life, because you know, it puts things into perspective, and then something that one of the helpers of the people in hiding said in an interview of her, kept repeating, like in my mind, where she said that she thinks helping is only natural, she said, and thought that in a time when she could have been in very, very serious trouble for helping Jewish people, and that was one of my takeaways that if that woman could do it, and be an active citizen and upstander and help people then I could do it, too.

So I remember, like my first takeaways there, and I thought that the Anne Frank house made a better version of myself, and that's very similar to what I'm feeling here at the Anne Frank Center.

The settings are a bit different, because that was the Netherlands and this is the United States of America, South Carolina.

So I had to learn different things.

I had to manage to do different kinds of programs, but the feeling itself was... being part of something that could potentially have a positive impact in the world or in my surroundings.

That's just the best feeling ever.

So, I love working here every single day.

What might be a little bit different is that there I felt like, Oh my God, this is the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and I'm here, and here I'm feeling like, Oh my God, this is the first like, like the only official Anne Frank site in the whole North America.

Oh my God, that's so amazing.

So, it's quite a similar...feeling with a bit of a difference.

>> I couldn't be more proud.

I think this is a wonderful addition to certainly the university, to Columbia, to South Carolina, but especially to the entire North America, the only site in North America representing the American choice of where to come to learn about Anne Frank.

So I feel this is a gem.

This is something that I don't think anyone could have foreseen, but with the tireless work of Dr. Doyle Stevick and others, they have brought a piece of history and a piece of the past that we all should look at, learn about that are here to Columbia, South Carolina.

The story is unique to these people, because they experienced it, but it's not a unique event, that has never happened before.

and it is our hope that we can prevent the event from happening again in the future.

So, the lessons of the Holocaust, transcend an immediate person or group of people.

If it talks about humanity, it talks about how we should treat one another, how we should respect one another.

What happens if we don't?

What happens if intolerance and bigotry and hatred dominates the scene, and we only need to look 75 years ago, 80 years ago to see what happens when we don't learn by what has happened in the past.

So this is, this is a story of mankind.

This is a story of how we, as the occupants of this world right now need to preserve it so that in the future, there will be no more tragedy, no more destruction, and no more disregard of those that are marginalized, those that are in the minority, and those that are caught in a regime of hatred.

>> Hate is not something that you just grow up and know about it, something that's learned.

When my parents grew up, the political situation then made people in Poland and Germany and Eastern Europe, they developed a hate for the Jewish people, whether it was from the political party or their parents or the society, I think that, that does parallel, somewhat...the hate here in the United States with Black Lives Matter or you know, people, somehow, through society or through like I said, family or parents, they develop a hatred, And...I do think that places like the Anne Frank House will hopefully give people an opportunity to come and have a conversation, you know, and get to know each other.

Meir Muller>> Both this course, Anne and Emmett: Confronting Racism, Antisemitism and Otherness through Pedagogy and our current course, Convergence and Divergence of the African American and Jewish American communities is a collaboration.

I teach it with Mr. Devin Randolph an entrepreneur here from South Carolina.

He represents the African American community, I represent the Jewish community, and together, we have worked to show students what it means to take the perspectives of each other's communities where we converge, where we diverge, how we can respect each other and work in solidarity, to move the students' thinking forward, and when we take students here to the Anne Frank Center, we have them not only gain more content knowledge, but it really has an emotional impact, where they stop and think what could I do?

>> Was there a post on social media that I could have interrupted because it had racist or anti-Semitic overtones?

Was there a conversation in my dorm that I should have done more to?

And I find that visits like this and conversations with the great students here at the University of South Carolina, enables them to be agents of change and make a better world?

>> I think there has to be a certain amount of humility in terms of incivility, in terms of how you approach these types of conversations.

For me, it's... through my story, right?

So I have honest discussions with my students, in terms of hey, I was - I grew up in such and such St. Matthews, I had a very unique experience with being exposed to drugs or being exposed to alcohol and hating kind of education and... explaining to them why.

I think as anyone who's in a teaching and learning role, I think that when Dr. Muller and I created this course, we did not create the course with us being the experts, right?

We create the course where we come as a unit together, and then we build off that.

Meir Muller>> So it was a silence in my home.

It was not spoken.

When I asked my grandmother, how come my mother had so many pictures of her family and she had none.

There was no answer given.

When I would ask about the numbers on my grandfather's arm.

There was no answer given, why she spoke with an accent, no answer given.

So, my parents believed that children were too innocent, too young to hear these hard truths, but I'll tell you, my sisters, and I knew that there was something dangerous.

We knew that there was something bad.

We just couldn't name it, but we lived with that, but my parents took a route of not sharing.

I believe, with all respect to them, that is not the way we should handle these issues with young children.

Having a doctoral degree in early childhood education, having 30 years of experience as an early childhood educator, I know that young children can hear hard truths in a...developmentally appropriate manner, they can hear about racism, as a matter of fact, Black children, and their families have to talk about racism, and therefore I feel it is incumbent upon White families to talk about it, as well.

Lilly Filler>> My parents survived, so...there is my happiness.

I wouldn't be here otherwise, and despite their terrible, tragic experiences when they were young, they always spoke of...hope, and forgiveness and understanding.

So I certainly didn't grow up in a household that exuded anything but love.

It was...a wonderful feeling.

It was a little isolating, because growing up here in Columbia, South Carolina, you know, very Southern tradition is to get together with families on Sunday to go to grandma's house, and so every Monday when I was in school, grade school, and I remember in the second grade, the teacher would go around the classroom and say, and what did you do this weekend, and everyone ultimately ended up with Oh, we went to grandma's house, for...lunch.

I didn't know what a grandma was, and so I went home, and I remember talking to my mom, and I said, Mom, why don't we go to grandma's house on Sunday for lunch, because everybody's doing that, and that's when she sat me down for the first time, and suddenly, we lost everybody.

That's my mom.

And that would have been your father's mom.

That's a grandma.

That's the parents of your parents, and we don't have a grandma to go to on Sunday, and it was at that point that I realized there was a difference.

I had no aunts.

I had no uncles, I had no cousins.

We had no photographs.

That was a hard one, no photographs, I have no photographs of my mom, as a young girl.

I have one photograph of my dad as a 18 month old or 12 month old.

So it was at that point that I felt a loss that there was something that other people had, that we could never have.

Meir Muller>> It was hard work, great people, and a recognition that why now is because things have not improved enough.

Of course, we don't have Jim Crow laws.

We don't have the Nazi regime, but we still have an unprecedent level of anti-Semitism right now in our country, it's growing every year, and racism is not a thing of the past.

We do not shine a light on the brilliance and beauty of Black culture of history of language, and those are things that we need to do if we're going to have a better world.

So, it is right now.

We need to take the words of Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winner who said that silence only helps the oppressors, never the oppressed.

So, the Anne Frank Center is a beacon.

It is a light saying silence is not acceptable.

You need to engage and you need to do it now.

Esther>> I just implore you to learn about the Holocaust, learn about what happened and learn the history because one of my parents' biggest fears was that it could happen again.

And I promised them that I would do my best now in my life to tell people what happened.

So that's what I'm trying to do.

Thank you so much for being here.

♪ Rabbi singing Hebrew song ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues singing ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues singing ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues singing ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi continues singing ♪ ♪ ♪ Rabbi song ending ♪