A visit to the Anne Frank Museum located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, expands the educator’s ability to teach students about the Holocaust.

Like many of my fellow educators, during my 36-year career I was frequently faced with the task of teaching my students about the Holocaust. To approach this sensitive topic, teachers often introduce young people to The Diary of Anne Frank, a true story about a Jewish teenager in Amsterdam who went into hiding to escape capture and deportation by the Nazis. On a recent vacation to the Netherlands, I was able to visit the place where Anne and seven others were concealed for more than two years, until their heartbreaking discovery, arrest, and deportation. A visit to this historic site is a valuable experience for the teacher who shares Anne’s story with students.

Visiting the secret annex allowed me a deeper understanding of the experiences Anne and her family shared as they attempted to escape the Nazis’ persecution: the darkness of the rooms and the closeness of the walls, the provisions for daily human needs (how do eight people use a toilet all day without the ability to flush it until after nightfall?), and the ever-present fear of discovery.

As I passed through the hinged bookcase that camouflages the entrance to the hiding place and stepped from one covert room to another, it was sobering to realize that my footsteps fell directly on top of those of the ill-fated asylum-seekers. Of the eight people who went into hiding, Anne’s father was the only one to survive their deportation. I found it especially sorrowful that after the war, he had to live with the knowledge that even after his Herculean efforts to rescue his family, he wasn’t able to save them. And throughout the entire museum, Anne’s own words, taken directly from her diary, projected as a reminder of the resiliency of the human spirit.

It is these expanded understandings, experiences, and emotions that make a visit to a historic place like this so worthwhile. The action makes the teacher a better teacher.

Author Terry Lee Marzell at the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

If you are committed to making a pilgrimage to the Anne Frank house, you can only visit the museum by buying tickets for a specific day and time ahead of time. Tickets are released two months in advance, and you must buy your tickets online. The cost is 10 Euros for adults. To learn more, visit the website at the Anne Frank House Museum for additional information.

Virtuoso musicians, excellent opera singers, and elegant ballet dancers from the Sound of Vienna company perform a program of classical music, opera, and ballet.

Classical music, opera, and ballet! How do our students react when teachers say these words? In all honesty, I’d guess that most students would not respond very enthusiastically. Although music permeates just about every aspect of our daily lives, from special ceremonies, to movie scores, to radio or television commercials, to sports events, or just leisure listening, students usually make selections from categories that are popular and contemporary, not classical or operatic. Unless the students are from Austria, that is.

While travelling in Austria earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending a concert in Vienna featuring classical music, opera, and ballet. The event was staged by a company called Sound of Vienna, an organization that has been been delighting international and domestic audiences with “dinner and a concert” programs for more than 15 years. Virtuoso musicians, excellent opera singers, and elegant ballet dancers presented an evening full of Viennese charm. The night I attended, the program offered many selections by Austrian composers Strauss and Mozart, with additional pieces by Lumbye, Suppe, and Ansage. All of the pieces, including the opera selections, were fresh and easy on the ear. Some of the pieces were familiar, the dancers were enthralling, and the performers even threw in a dash of comedy. I loved it all!  I’m afraid my education in classical music is very limited, and, like most American students, before attending this concert I was not particularly enthusiastic about increasing my knowledge. But this concert was so much fun and it was so entertaining that I plan to learn more about the topic right away!

The students of Vienna have a head start on me about this. Did you know that the children of Vienna, which is known as the City of Music, are regularly taken on field trips to concerts of classical music as part of their education program? Obviously, Austria is a country that takes its musical heritage very seriously, and they devote significant resources to promoting a love of this heritage among its young people. Having come from a country that offers meager support for school music education programs, this seems amazing and wonderful to me.

I think Vienna will forever be a City of Music. Everywhere we went there we saw young people carrying cases of various sizes containing musical instruments, so it was evident that Viennese children are responding very enthusiastically to the love for classical music that has been carefully nurtured by their schools. They are preparing themselves to carry on their country’s cherished musical traditions. Here in America, we could learn a lot from educators in Vienna!

If you ever plan to travel to Vienna, I would highly recommend you attend one of the many “dinner and a concert” programs available to the public there. To learn more about the events specifically staged by the company I mentioned in this blog post, check out their website at Sound of Vienna.