A German kindergarten called Anne Frank plans to change its name. This decision sparked strong criticism as anti-Semitic acts have increased in Europe following the Hamas attack in Israel.
An Anne Frank nursery renamed “Explorers of the World”? This is the decision of the board of directors of a company based in Tangerhütte, Germany, reports the German regional newspaper “Volksstimme”.
The city’s mayor wants to make the building, which has been called “Anne Frank” since the 1970s, more “open” and promote the “diversity” of children.
An initiative by employees and parents
According to the Berlin daily newspaper Berliner Kurier, this initiative comes from parents and daycare staff who want a more child-friendly name.
According to Linda Schichor, head of the daycare center, the story of the Holocaust and Anne Frank is too difficult for young children to understand, and parents with a migrant background do not recognize themselves in the name.
“We wanted something that had no political background,” said Linda Schichor.
The young Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1929 to Jewish parents and fled with her family to the Netherlands in 1933 to escape National Socialism. From 1942 to 1944, she hid in an apartment in Amsterdam and wrote a diary that would become one of the most famous works of world literature. Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 15.
For the mayor of Tangerhütte, Andreas Brohm, a new name will make the municipal garden center a more “open” place.
“It is important for the institution to make this conceptual change visible to the outside world,” he said People’s voice.
“If parents and staff want a name that better reflects the new concept, it will have more weight in the global political situation,” he added.
A heavily criticized project
For the director of the Anne Frank Education Center based in Frankfurt, Deborah Schnabel, the name change would “contribute to the invisibility of Jewish life and the stories of Jewish victims, the foundations of our culture of remembrance,” reports the German daily Süddeutsche.
The executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, Christoph Heubner, also expressed sharp criticism of the project in a letter to the people of Tangerhütte and called for it to be reconsidered.
In the face of criticism, the city’s mayor assured that the name change project was decided at the beginning of the summer, independently of the anti-Semitic attacks that are currently increasing in Europe following the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7th.
“Tangerhütte, with its educational institutions and its civic engagement, stands for a cosmopolitan Germany that is aware of both its historical responsibility and its educational mission,” said the mayor in a statement People’s voice.
The local council, which must approve the name change, has not yet set a date for the vote.