Marin Holocaust survivor: ‘All of us can make a difference’

Sleepy Hollow resident Anita Frank, 87, visited Miller Creek Middle School in San Rafael to detail her family's escape from the Nazis during World War II.

More than 400 children, parents and educators from 20 Marin schools joined this week to shed light on the Holocaust and work to make sure it never happens again.

“All of us can make a difference,” Anita Frank of Sleepy Hollow, a Holocaust survivor, told the gathering Wednesday at Miller Creek Middle School in San Rafael. “Just as hatred is contagious, warmth is also contagious.”

The event was held ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday. The annual observance, initiated by the United Nations, marks the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, part of the network of gas chambers that Hitler’s Nazi regime used to execute at least 6 million Jews in World War II.

The event also comes as antisemitic incidents are on the rise across the nation. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2,031 antisemitic incidents were reported in the United States between Oct. 7 and Dec. 7. By comparison, 465 incidents were reported during the same period in 2022.

On average, Jews in America experienced nearly 34 antisemitic incidents per day over the past two months, the organization reported.

The organization lists seven incidents in Corte Madera, Petaluma, Novato, San Rafael and Larkspur between Feb. 1, 2023, and July 30. Some involved antisemitic flyers or other materials that were distributed to the communities, while others involved what was described as harassment or vandalism.

“What’s really important now is the education,” said San Rafael Councilmember Rachel Kertz, who spoke at Wednesday’s event.

“To have the stories from survivors is very unique, but we also recognize that we don’t have that many survivors these days,” Kertz said.

“To have more education and understanding of what came with the Holocaust and how antisemitism is a real factor that impacts all of us in different ways,” she said. “It’s very important that the education start as young as possible.”

According to Morgan Blum Schneider, director of the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center, Miller Creek Middle School had spate of antisemitic incidents last spring. School officials contacted the Marin County Office of Education for help.

The county office, in turn, reached out to the Jewish center. The Bay Area nonprofit received a $1.9 million grant from the county office and the state Legislature in 2022 to develop statewide school Holocaust and genocide education programs and to set up a state collaborative to offer teacher training and help with curriculum development.

“So far, we’ve engaged 500 teachers and 167 school districts in the state,” Blum Schneider said. “We want to bring this curriculum and these programs to all school districts in the state by 2027.”

After a staff training last year, Miller Creek teachers introduced a program involving children of the Holocaust. About 600 Miller Creek students were assigned to research a child’s fate during the Holocaust, if known.

The profiles of the children were provided to Miller Creek by the Museum of Tolerance, one of several partners working with the new statewide collaborative and the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center.

On Wednesday, posters that Miller Creek students created about the children lined the walls of the gymnasium where the event was held.

“Many of my students have never had an opportunity to have live testimony from someone who survived genocide,” said Miller Creek eighth-grade teacher Monica Burrowes.

She said the statewide collaboration was “exceptional” in that it brought together programs that had previously operated in a piecemeal fashion.

“It brought all the pieces together, and made it so clear and so coherent and digestible for teachers and manageable for students,” Burrowes said of the trainings.

Another $1.5 million grant has recently been approved for the statewide program, to be administered through the California Department of Education, Blum Schneider said.

Frank, who turns 88 this month, received a standing ovation from the crowd after recounting how she and her family escaped death in the gas chambers through the kindness of a local Dutch government official who decided to save one Jewish family.

Born in Emmen, Holland, Frank was 6 years old at the time. She and her family members were warned to flee just one day before they would have been taken to Auschwitz, Frank said.

“You are never to tell anyone you are Jewish, or you will die,” Frank’s mother told her when they went into hiding in August 1942 in the Dutch countryside.

The government official arranged for the family members to receive fake passports and new names and identities, all without the Jewish yellow star badge that the Nazis used to identify their victims.

After Holland was liberated by American soldiers in September 1944, Frank and her family regrouped and resumed their lives for a time. In 1952, they emigrated to the U.S., where Frank, who spoke English, was hired as an au pair for an entertainment executive in Beverly Hills.

She went on to receive a master’s degree in Russian studies from Harvard University and a doctorate in human development. She married and has a son and two grandchildren.

In 2004, after a business career, Frank moved to Marin to be closer to her son, who was in San Francisco.

Frank said people must realize that the power exists in themselves to make a change in the world for the good.

“Even though it was 80 years ago, my personal story is a reminder that what happened then could happen now,” Frank said. “We need to make sure it never happens again.”