Library to feature Anne Frank exhibit

WESTAMPTON The Burlington County Library will present a traveling exhibit on the diaries of Anne Frank starting next yer.

Developed by the Anne Frank Center USA, the exhibit, which opens Jan. 8 and continues through Feb. 20, will focus on the five surviving notebooks and 300 pages of memoirs and observations that Frank wrote while hiding during World War II from Nazi occupiers of Amsterdam.

Frank, who died at 15 in a concentration camp after her Jewish family was betrayed to German authorities, began keeping a diary at 13. Discovered after the war, it was first published in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into many languages.

Student visitors to the exhibit "will be encouraged to develop their own voices through writing and journaling," according to the library, "just as Anne found her voice while writing her diary in hiding during the war."

Additionally, the director of the Anne Frank Center, Hillary Eddy Stipelman, will present two workshops on the diaries, one for teachers and the other for the public.

The teachers' workshop will be Jan. 8 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the library auditorium. The workshop will "model effective ways to engage students in addressing and responding to primary resources," and help teachers develop lessons related to the Holocaust and Frank's writing.

On Jan. 9, Stipelman will conduct the general workshop from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Targeted to students, it will feature a short documentary on Frank's life and encourage students to "develop their own voices through writing and journaling."

Registration is required for both programs, and can be made online at www.bcls.lib.nj.us. The library is at 5 Pioneer Blvd.

Further information is available by calling 609-267-9660 or by visiting the website www.annefrank.com. - David O'Reilly