An ordinary life torn apart

Her young, smiling face personifies the innocent victims of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews during World War II.

The story of Anne Frank, as told in her diary and numerous books written about her and Holocaust history, has been taught in Illinois schools for years.

But this month, Ela Area Public Library offers an intimate glimpse into Frank's life through an exhibit of her private family photo albums never before seen in the Chicago suburbs.

"Anne Frank: A Private Photo Album" will be showcased through March 31 at the library, 275 Mohawk Trail, Lake Zurich.

The exhibit was developed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and is sponsored in North America by the Anne Frank Center in New York.

"It's been in other cities, but this is the first time in Illinois," said Natalie Ziarnik, head of Ela library's children's department.

Ela is the only library in Illinois to host the exhibit with funding through an Illinois State Library grant. Library officials hope to draw in older kids with the exhibit.

"The thing that intrigued us about this exhibit … it's about the time in Anne Frank's life before she went into hiding," Ziarnik said. "You get a more complete picture of her with these photographs and her diary."

The Frank family escaped to the Netherlands and went into hiding on July 6, 1942, after the Nazis came to power. Anne, her father, Otto Frank, her mother, Edith, and her sister, Margot, and another family also in hiding were discovered two years later.

They were sent to concentration camps, where Anne and Margot eventually died.

The exhibit shows Anne's life from birth on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, leading up to the point when she and her family went into hiding.

Anne was 13 years old at the time.

Images of Anne as a baby in her mother's arms, of her bed, in her bathing suit at the beach, playing with her school friends, sitting quietly by herself with a doll together paint a tranquil picture of an ordinary life torn apart by extraordinary circumstances.

"It was such a fragile existence," Ziarnik said. "Before you know it, it's all shattered. And this could happen to anybody. They are very emotional and intimate. They look so powerful to me maybe because you know what's going to happen to them."

In an era when family studio portraits were the norm, the Franks' family photos were among the first such snapshots captured by a personal camera by Anne's father.

"He caught them in daily life, as opposed to the formal and stiff family portraits," Ziarnik said. "It's really capturing the day and that was something new."

The exhibit includes a few family pictures from Germany, but most were taken in the Netherlands. The pictures also offer hints to Anne's personality.

"I think you see that she was vivacious, that she was social, which comes across a lot in her diary because she talks a lot about her popularity," Ziarnik said. "She is a little bit dramatic and sensitive and you can see that in a lot of the photographs, too."

The photo albums and Anne's diary were later discovered in the family's secret hiding place.

"One of the really amazing things about Anne is she is always hopeful," Ziarnik said. "You wonder if those pictures and those memories of those times had something to do with that."