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Florida Students Live Like Anne Frank

A school sleepover as Holocaust study aid

by
Orlee Maimon
October 14, 2009

Eighth graders at Florida’s Bethany Christian School, which promises “academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment,” traded their iPods and cell phones for potatoes, bread, and carrots in an attempt to turn their classroom into Anne Frank’s attic for a strangely ascetic sleepover over the weekend, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Save for bathroom breaks, the students remained in the room from the end of the school day Friday until noon on Saturday—an entire 18 hours or so—in an attempt to understand what life was like for Anne. Apparently it worked. “It really showed me just how hard it was to live in the Secret Annexe,” said one commenter on the Sun-Sentinel’s website, who said she was a student in the class. But Andrew Rosenkranz, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for Florida, suggested historical reenactments are perhaps not the best way to teach the Holocaust. “Anne Frank’s experience was not a sleepover,” he told Tablet Magazine.