Reopening of Boise’s Anne Frank memorial features new additions to spark conversation, action

The Wassmuth Center for Human Rights Center will reveal a new outdoor classroom, as well as a new sculpture, to the public on Thursday at Boise’s Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial.

The Anne Frank memorial was originally founded after 50,000 people attended an Anne Frank exhibit that came to Boise in 1995, according to Adrienne Evans, Wassmuth Center’s outreach coordinator and the executive director for United Visions of Idaho.

“It really opened people’s minds about the interest and the greater need to address human rights in Idaho,” Evans said.

Founders then raised funds to build the original memorial, which has been under construction for several weeks and will reopen this week. The event will feature the dedication of the Marilyn Shuler Classroom for Human Rights, named after the co-founder of the Idaho Anne Franke Human Rights Memorial.

The dedication will begin at 11:45 a.m. in the Anne Frank Amphitheater in front of the Anne Frank statue at 777 S. 8th St. The event will go to 1 p.m. A formal ribbon-cutting at noon will officially open the classroom. A memorial guide will be present from noon to 1 p.m. to demonstrate and explain the new features installed in the classroom.

The memorial is one of the only places in the world where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is on full display, and it is the only Anne Frank memorial in the entire country.

The outdoor classroom will have room for 35 people and include a digital kiosk that will help tell the stories — told through their own voices — of marginalized groups throughout Idaho. Previous technology at the site has also been updated during the construction.

“All the technology has been replaced to make the memorial a welcoming space for everyone,” Evans said. “They replaced pieces to make it more ADA-complaint and accessible for people across the spectrum of our diversity. We used to have cranks that you would have to wind to hear an audio story. Now, they’re all solar and push button.”

The dedication will also reveal the Spiral of Injustice sculpture, a sculpture that’s designed and fabricated by Ken McCall as a teaching tool for starting conversations about human rights.

“It’s this phenomenal thing created by the center to have an entirely different frame on how to discuss human rights and discrimination in our vastly changing world,” Evans said.

The sculpture is an examination of “the Other,” or a person who is perceived by a group as not belonging who are often targeted because of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ability, nationality or religious preferences, according to the Wassmuth Center.

In the sculpture, “the Other” is shown wrapped around a downward spiral of human behavior. The sculpture begins with language, often used to tear people down, followed by avoidance, discrimination, violence, and, finally, elimination of that group of people.

The piece is designed to be interactive and has script in Braille, Spanish, English, Arabic and Chinese.

Wassmuth Center Executive Director Dan Prinzing said the new additions play a vital role in understanding the original statue of Anne Frank.

“Now we begin to frame her story with the concept of, ‘How did injustice take root in the period we know as the Holocaust?’” he said. “Now we’re changing the narrative as visitors come through the memorial.”

With the addition of the classroom and the placement of the statue, Prinzing said, organizers are moving the messaging of the memorial forward.

“We have always said the memorial is a place that provides hope, a place that inspires, a place that causes us to reflect and to talk with one another,” Prinzing said. “But the memorial is also a place that issues a call to action. It’s one thing to think about the issues, another to talk about them, but now what are we going do to become involved?”

Both additions will serve as a model in Idaho, nationally and internationally, as a way to talk about discrimination and violence. It will also address how to prevent injustice and interrupt the spiral of injustice.

Marilyn Shuler was a co-founder of the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial and a board member of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights for 20 years. She was also a founding member of The Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, which was created in 1987 with the purpose to end violence and harassment by stopping individual and organized bigotry, according to The Wassmuth Center. Shuler died in February 2017 due to lung failure.

For information, visit wassmuthcenter.org.

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 4:09 PM.