THEME 5 BREAKING BARRIERS Prejudice


Prejudice is another type of barrier people can face. Prejudice is an unfavourable opinion that is not based on reason or experience. People can face prejudice for many reasons, including race, religion and gender. It is important that we work as a society to break down prejudices.


Anti-Semitism is hostility towards or hatred against Jewish people. The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.


Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish victim of the Holocaust, was forced into hiding with her family in 1942 when she was 12 years old. The hiding place was a concealed room behind a bookcase in her father’s workplace. Anne kept a diary of the events up until her arrest in 1944. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.


Her diary was translated from its original Dutch and published with the help of her father, Otto, the only surviving member of the Frank family.


The Diary of a Young Girl Wednesday, 8 July 1942


Dearest Kitty, I’ll begin by telling you what happened Sunday afternoon.


At three o’clock … the doorbell rang. I didn’t hear it, since I was out on the balcony, lazily reading in the sun. A little while later Margot appeared in the kitchen doorway looking very agitated. ‘Father has received a call-up notice from the SS,’ she whispered. ‘Mother has gone to see Mr van Daan.’ (Mr van Daan is Father’s business partner and a good friend.)


I was stunned. A call-up: everyone knows what that means. Visions of concentration camps and lonely cells raced through my head. How could we let Father go to such a fate? ‘Of course he’s not going,’ declared Margot as we waited for Mother in the living room. ‘Mother’s gone to Mr van Daan to ask whether we can move to our hiding place tomorrow. The van Daans are going with us. There will be seven of us altogether.’ Silence. We couldn’t speak. The thought of Father off visiting someone in the Jewish Hospital and completely unaware of what was happening, the long wait for Mother, the heat, the suspense – all this reduced us to silence.


Thursday, 9 July 1942 Dearest Kitty,


… Here’s a description of the building … A wooden staircase leads from the downstairs passage to the second fl oor. At the top of the stairs is a landing, with doors on either side. The door on the left takes you up to the spice storage area, attic and loft in the front part of the house. A typically Dutch, very steep, ankle-twisting fl ight of stairs also runs from the front part of the house to another door opening onto the street.


The door to the right of the landing leads to the ‘Secret Annexe’ at the back of the house. No one would ever suspect there were so many rooms behind that plain grey door. There’s just one small step in front of the door, and then you’re inside. Straight ahead of you is a steep fl ight of stairs. To the left is a narrow hallway opening onto a room that serves as the Frank family’s living-room and bedroom. Next door is a smaller room, the bedroom and study of the two young ladies of the family. To the right of the stairs is a ‘bathroom’, a windowless room with just a sink. The door in the corner leads to the lavatory and another one to Margot’s and my room … Now I’ve introduced you to the whole of our lovely Annexe!


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