 Good evening everyone, I'm going to invite you all to take your seats. I know the food is delicious, bring some to your seat. We have a full house, so I hope there are enough seats, or nearly enough seats, but there are a few sprinkled here and there, so I hope you all find a spot. I'm Sarah Geyer, I'm Dean of Arts and Humanities here at Berkeley and a professor of English and Jewish Studies, and I'm truly delighted to welcome you all here together for the inaugural snapper lecture. I'm also honored to have our speaker, Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House Museum here today, and my colleague Professor DeWolf will actually introduce him. My task is to acknowledge you and introduce you and say a bit about this event. I am so thrilled to see so many members of UC Berkeley's Dutch Studies community, Magnus community, guests from the Dutch consulate, Belgian consulate, members of the Netherlands America University League, and friends and families of family members of Professor Emeritus Johann Snopper and his wife, Gerta. I want to thank the Magnus Collection of Jewish Art and Life and the executive director, Hannah Weisman, who I know is here in the back for co-hosting this program and this really spectacular space. I hope you all had a chance to wander through the exhibits on your way in, and I also want to thank the Center for Jewish Studies, and I see that Professor Ethan Katz is also somewhere here in the corner, Professor Ethan Katz, who also are co-sponsors of this evening's event. This lecture brings together two areas of commitment at Berkeley. The first is our commitment to global languages and cultures and language study. We and I understand the study of language and the study of culture as core to our understanding of worlds beyond our own, whether they're distant in space, distant in time, or even incredibly close by. Our Dutch Studies program, which is one of only six such programs in the country, is a stellar example of the commitment to language, linguistic diversity, and your commitment to Dutch Studies that this program, and your commitment to Dutch Studies and to this program, is essential to its success. But this evening's lecture is also about how the past informs the present, how a house museum can situate a world and situate us in a world that is not or no longer our own. And I should say anecdotally that I took my family to the Anne Frank House last Christmas and the experience of both radical familiarity, walking through rooms, seeing beds or food or cupboards or photographs, and also unfathomable distance, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in this space for so long, so isolated, so surrounded by a gorgeous city to which you have no access. That those two pieces of the story were evident in every turn. Museums have the potential to do that work. Today, around the country and around the world, we're all thinking about new forms and experiences of antisemitism and new forms and experiences of genocide. Museums and universities have a responsibility not only to call out forms of aggression or discrimination, but to create archives, to support research, to provide experiences to understand better, more closely, and to communicate differently. We have a responsibility to engage in a robust critical education. And that is really what brings us all together this evening. This evening's lecture, while the first, is also a first in a series. And that series is made possible by really generous donations to the Johann Snopper Endowment, which was created last year in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Dutch studies program, which you founded. This is an open opportunity. The Endowment can continue to grow, just as our study of the Dutch world and worlds will continue to grow. And so I also want to invite you to think about that possibility. I won't name all of the donors, but I hope that you'll find your names on the slides behind me. So in addition to thanking you all and situating us, I now have the pleasure of introducing my colleague, Professor Jeroen DeWolf, who holds the Queen Beatrix Chair in Dutch Studies and is the director. He's the director of so many things, but I'll just name some of them. He's the director of the Institute of European Studies. He's also chair of the Faculty Advisory Board on Study Abroad. He's a scholar of the Dutch slave trade who also teaches a course on Anne Frank. Please join me in welcoming him. Well, dear colleagues, dear students, dear friends, good evening. My name is Jeroen DeWolf. I'm the director of Berkeley's Dutch Studies program, the proud director of the Dutch Studies program, and allow me to join Dean Gaier in welcoming you all to the inaugural Professor Johan Snapper lecture. I would like to extend a special welcome to our distinguished guests starting with Professor Snapper himself and his spouse, Gaier de Snapper. Also Agnes Koppelman, Deputy Consul General of the Netherlands in San Francisco. We also welcome Nobel Prize Laureate Guido Imbens. We welcome Doug Engmann, former honorary consul of the Netherlands. We welcome Karen Feldman, chair of the Department of German. And of course we welcome today's speaker, Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House. Allow me also to express my gratitude to our colleagues from the Jewish Studies program and the Magnus Collection of Jewish Art and Life, in particular Ethan Katz and Hannah Weisman for their support. A warm welcome also to all the members of the Netherlands America University League and to all our Dutch Studies students. If I may, I would also like to add a personal note and extend a very special welcome to Ryan Tereblini, who was a student of mine in my very first course. I taught here in Berkeley a course on Anne Frank and who brought with him today his wonderful Oma, the Dutch Holocaust survivor Sylvia van Braak. A warm welcome to all. The idea of today's talk grew out of a course in our Dutch Studies program. A course that Professor Snapper once started and a course that I continued when in 2007, I took over the directorship of the program. A course dedicated to Anne Frank as part of a broader reflection on the Holocaust in the Nazi occupied Netherlands. Little did I know that only weeks before our event was to happen, we would all be witnessing scenes in Israel that brought back memories of the tragic fate of so many Jews during the Holocaust. And I dare to say that never since the end of World War II it has been more important for us to ensure that future generations do not forget. Do not forget what happened to Jewish people in those dark years. And I congratulate Professor Snapper for having the foresight already half a century ago when he created his course on Anne Frank. And I congratulate also Ronald Leopold for choosing a topic for today's lecture that couldn't be more timely. Before we start the lecture, however, allow me to first say a few words on the person we honor today. Johann Snapper. Johann Snapper was born in the Netherlands in a small town near the Hague. He was born in 1935, which implied that as a child he experienced the German invasion in 1940 and the Nazi occupation until May 1945. Like other children born in the Netherlands at that time in history, Johann's early years were characterized with many challenges, in particular the last winter of the occupation, the so-called hunger winter, when over 20,000 people in the Netherlands died of starvation. His early childhood was however exceptionally dangerous due to the decision by Johann's courageous parents, Marta and Hein, to hide in their house a Jewish family, the Hartogs. Johann's father also resisted Nazi policies in his function as director of the regional labor office, which was charged with registering Dutch laborers for forced work in German factories. Both components of this courageous resistance were duly honored on a national level, but also internationally at Yad Vashem and it's righteous among the nation's memorial, where in 1977, Johann Snapper and his family were honored. Like many other Dutch families, the Snoppers later decided to leave the Netherlands after World War II and they immigrated with their six children to the United States. They did so in 1949 and they settled in a small town in Washington State, where Johann's father had already four of his brothers living. Johann later studied at Calvin College in Michigan, where he received a BA in philosophy in 1957 and after that he completed an MA in German studies at the University of Chicago, then transferred to UCLA where he became a TA in the German department and in 1963 received a PhD in German studies. From there he moved to Berkeley, where he was hired as an assistant professor in the department of German. In 1971, Johann became the very first incumbent of a newly, of the newly established and that time Princess Beatrix Chair. This establishment of a Dutch studies program at a major American university received, as you can see, much press coverage. Also because the funding for it could only be guaranteed when one MP, the legendary Hendrik Kukuk of the Dutch Farmers' Party, decided to give it his vote of support and thereby granted a majority in the Dutch parliament. In 1982, the name of the chair was changed to Queen Beatrix and at this occasion the queen herself visited the Berkeley campus to inaugurate the Queen Beatrix Chair in Dutch language, literature and culture. One of her children, the late Prince Friso, would later also study here in Berkeley in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Now, among Johann snappers, many accomplishments as Queen Beatrix professor are also the international conference series in Dutch literature and linguistics. His creation of the Netherlands-America University League that allowed a strong connection between the university and the Dutch community in the Bay Area and of course, his scholarly work, including several book publications of which I highlight three, a book on the Dutch author Gerard Reven, a study on post-war Dutch literature and an analysis of the work of the recently deceased Dutch Jewish author Marga Mincombe. Johann not only established strong foundations for the Dutch studies program, he also managed to expand it in 1982 with a second in doubt chair, this time with the support of the Flemish region in Belgium where the official language is also Dutch. This second chair was a rotating visiting professorship called the Peter Paul Rubens chair in Flemish studies that has allowed the annual appointment of outstanding faculty from Flemish universities as visiting professors in Berkeley. The current one, Professor David Byrne, a musicologist from the University of Leuven is present here today. Equally important was the support Johann managed to secure for the Dutch book collection at the Doe Library, making it the richest in the United States. For these efforts, Johann Snapper was honored with a double knighthood, the Dutch Order of Orange Nassau and the Order of the Crown of Belgium. In honor of Johann, we also brought a guest book tonight. So please consider leaving a short message to Johann in the book we intend to offer him as a gift at the end of tonight's event. Allow me to just say a few more words about our Dutch studies program. In 2007, I had the honor to succeed Johann as Queen Beatrix Professor. And together with my colleague is Mae van der Hoeven who coordinates our Dutch language program. We've been able to make the program grow and successfully added a doctoral studies component to it by establishing in 2012 the designated emphasis in Dutch studies for doctoral students. Equally important is that thanks to his Mae initiative, we are now offering Dutch language courses to students at all UCs which who can join us, who can join our program virtually and many of them do, including many graduate students. So I'm proud to say that Berkeley's Dutch studies program is today by far the largest in the nation. And none of this would have been possible without Johann. Without Johann's hard labor, his dedication and his talents. And if I may, Johann allow also a personal note to this. I can't thank you enough for the support I received from you as someone who was always there to help me but also as someone who gave me the freedom to develop the program in the way I thought was right. And I also had the pleasure of keeping the connection to the Royal Family by welcoming Queen Maxima, Maxima of the Netherlands to the Berkeley campus last year. And when Her Majesty met me, the first thing she asked me to do was to transmit the greetings from her mother-in-law to Professor Snapper and to congratulate him with the 50th anniversary of his program. And Princess Beatrix had also asked Queen Maxima an additional favor. She wanted a picture, a picture of her daughter-in-law with the new Beatrix professor. And of course, we followed up on this and sent her the following picture. And I hope that Princess Beatrix was satisfied with it. But much more important than that is that Her Majesty also made time to interact with Dutch students because after all, it is for them, it is for the students that our program exists. This is then also the moment for me to thank all the donors who have made it possible for us to establish this new tradition, the Professor Johan Snapper Lecture in Dutch Studies. In particular, I want to extend my gratitude to Tinneke Jacobson, who started this initiative and to the Leibhardt family and the many others who enthusiastically supported it. We hope, of course, to make, thank you. And we hope, of course, to make this endowment grow. Grow further so that we can do even more to our students. And I would like then to ask all of you at this point to please take your cell phone. If you could, if you have a cell phone, please take your cell phone. Please take your cell phone and please take a picture. Take a picture or scan this QR code. Please do, please do. It will offer you an opportunity to support us. To support our Dutch Studies program. It will lead you to the donation portal. Those of you who have difficulties with the QR code, they can also find it on the Dutch Studies website, Dutch.Britley.edu. And of course, some of you may think giving donations, that's actually something for millionaires and unfortunately I'm not a millionaire, but then I have good news for all of you because in the Dutch Studies program, we welcome all donations. Starting at $25. I really hope that many of you will consider this opportunity to support us with the initiative. And for this, I thank you not only in English, but also in the beautiful Dutch language. Met hartelijk dank voor iedereen die ons program gestirnt. Now before I pass the floor to my colleague Esme, who will talk a little bit more about our program, let me briefly also share with you that the speaker for next year's snapper lecture has already been confirmed. Our choice for 2024 was actually inspired by what Johan once told me about one of the highlights of the visit to campus by Queen Beatrix. Namely that when she arrived on campus, the bells, the bells on top of our beautiful Campanile Tower played the beautiful Dutch song in naam van Oranje, do open the port. In fact, not all of you may know that, but the carrion, the bells on top of the Campanile, the carrion is actually a typically Dutch musical instrument. What the backpipe is to the Scottish, the carrion is to the Dutch. So for 2024, we decided to invite the famous carrion player and musicologist, Luc Rombouts, who will not only speak about the history of this fascinating musical instrument that once started in the Netherlands and later crossed the Atlantic and came to us here in the United States, but who will also perform in an exclusive Dutch carrion concert in honor of Professor Snapper and his friends. So we will do so on Sunday, September 15, 2024. Please mark your agendas. Without further ado, I will give the floor to my colleague Esme, who will tell us a little bit more about the Dutch studies program, Esme. Good evening, everyone. My name is Esme van der Hoefen and I am honored to present to you our Dutch studies program at this very special event. As a small program, Dutch studies is fortunate to be embedded in the department of German here at UC Berkeley. With two faculty members and one lecturer and a visiting professor from a Flemish university each academic year, we can offer a diverse program for our students, including a minor and a major for undergraduate students and a designated emphasis for graduate students. I will tell you more about our course offerings in a moment, but first, I want to take a moment to express our gratitude to the amazing staff members who keep our program running smoothly and successfully. I want to give a special shout out to our undergraduate and graduate student advisors and our department manager. Thank you, Gregory, Nadia and Andrea for all you do for our program and our students. You have fans in the audience. Dutch studies is an interdisciplinary field. We offer courses in English about literature, culture, history, colonial history, art history, music, also depending on our visiting professors. And many of these courses are cross listed with other departments and some of these courses fulfill breadth requirements. And as such, we can attract many students from a wide range of disciplines and some of these students are also interested in learning the Dutch language. Our Dutch language courses, our language track consists of five courses. We start with Dutch one and two, intensive language courses with five hours of classes per week. After completing these courses, students emerge with a solid foundation in vocabulary and grammar and the ability to express themselves in Dutch about everyday situations and personal experiences. Next, we offer two advanced courses where students dive deeper into cultural and historical topics as they fine tune their Dutch language skills. And our fifth course focuses on reading knowledge, attracting doctoral students from various fields who need to read in Dutch for their research. Jeroen already mentioned this briefly, but the pandemic forced us to adapt and we embraced the opportunity to offer our language courses remotely using Zoom. Thanks to UC online, students from other UC campuses can now enroll in Dutch here at Berkeley. My classroom has transformed into a hybrid space where in-person and remote students come together in real time. It is an incredible learning environment and in case you are wondering what the hybrid classroom looks like, I took some pictures for you. The Berkeley Language Center has equipped us with cutting edge Zoom rooms complete with screens, cameras, microphones and speakers. This room fosters a unique blend of in-person and remote interaction. Students in the classroom can see their remote classmates on the big screens on both ends of the classroom and our remote students also enjoy a class-wide view. A big shout out to our dedicated students from other UCs who adapted their schedules to take a Dutch class at Berkeley. UC Berkeley is on a semester system while other UCs are on a quarter system. So this requires quite a bit of flexibility on their part. One of the students here on the right is actually in the Netherlands right now on a UC exchange program. So she's a student at UCSB studying in Maastricht and taking a Dutch language class at Berkeley with a nine hour time difference, talking about dedication. We have had more than a dozen enthusiastic students from UC Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Irvine and San Diego join our program and we anticipate even more enrollments from other UCs in the future. To accommodate this growth, we have set up our very own fully operational Zoom room. It can accommodate up to 10 in-person students and yes, you'll even spot me joining remotely from time to time. Now I would like to give the floor to Julia Verdicht, a remarkable student in Dutch studies. She will give you a firsthand look at the student perspective. Julia, take it away. Good evening, everyone. My name is Julia Verdicht. Thank you all for coming today and of course, thank you to Miss van der Hove and the Dutch program for inviting me to share my experience with you today. I have been fortunate enough to study the Dutch language at Cal, the only UC with a Dutch language program as both an undergraduate and graduate student. As an undergraduate student, I began studying Dutch due to a heritage connection with the language. Going into the program, I didn't really have many expectations. However, I am eternally grateful that I decided to take that first class. In an incredibly large school like UC Berkeley, it can be easy to get lost in the fray. Finding community can be difficult in a school with thousands of students. The Dutch program allowed me to find a sense of community within the vast Berkeley ecosystem. I met other students with heritage connections but also students who were simply intrigued by the language or by Dutch culture. We came from different academic and cultural backgrounds, but we were all united in our desire to study the language and culture of the Netherlands. We studied hard in class but continued to actively practice outside of the classroom. Weekly coffee hours provided an opportunity for us to speak to each other and native Dutch speakers in a casual environment and the Dutch Student Association mainly run by Dutch language students. Also hosted events like pancake evenings and trips to San Francisco to celebrate Kings Day, which you can see up here, us enjoying our pancakes and a really cute picture with Miffy. The value of the program I began to see extends far beyond just learning a language. It provides a way for students to learn about, understand and connect with the country and its culture. I saw that as students, our horizons were broadened to a global scale as we took what we learned in the classroom into the world. Last year, a special visit from Queen Máxima of the Netherlands only furthered my conviction that this program really plays an important part in connecting UC Berkeley students to the wider world. I was lucky enough to come back to UC Berkeley as a graduate student this year and continue studying the language and I am committed to continuing because of how valuable the program was to me as an undergraduate and continues to be for me now as a graduate student. The Dutch language program at Cal is so much more than just a couple of students sitting in a classroom, learning grammar conventions and vocabulary. Don't get me wrong, we do have to do those things. But we also have the opportunity to take what we learn and use it to build local community and grow into individuals with a broader and more globalized understanding of the world. Well, it is now my pleasure to invite Ronald Leopold to the podium. Since 2011, Ronald has been the director of the Anne Frank House and for many years, he has been a great friend of our Dutch studies program. Ronald, it's wonderful to see you again here with us in Berkeley and like all our guests today, we are very much looking forward to your lecture, a lecture on transmitting Anne Frank to GNZ. Please join me in welcoming Ronald Leopold. Thank you. So good evening, everyone. And thank you, Jeroen, for a professor, Jeroen, for your very kind introduction. It's great to be back at Berkeley. I've been here a couple of times and I always found the environment so incredibly inspiring, very beautiful also, of course. It is something we really don't know in maybe not even in Europe, but for sure not in the Netherlands to have this campus community. And I also had a privilege earlier today and on Monday to give two classes on the Dutch studies program and I see some of the students there present here and I must say it was such an inspiring experience to have this conversation about Anne Frank and I was thinking, if this is GNZ, we don't have to worry because this is really, we don't have to transmit anything because they will carry this legacy forward into the future and I will have full confidence when I will retire in, let's say, three years. And so, I also learned about the speaker of next year from Belgium, an expert in Keryon. You say Keryon? No, that's basically how we say Keryon, so that's easy. And I don't know if you, you know, kind of a bridge this year and next year because I don't know if you know the entries from the diary of Anne Frank about the Keryon. She wrote about the Keryon in 1943 because those of you who have visited the Anne Frank house know, might know, that the house is located next to what do we call the Bester Kerk, the Wester Tau, the church. Those of you who have visited the Anne Frank house many years ago might have, you might stood in line across and had to wait three to four hours in order to get entrance to the museum. Now, these Keryons, the bells that are up in the Wester Tau, they were taken out in 1943 because the German military needed the bronze, the medal for their war industry. So when that happened, you will see in Anne's diary what happened was that it was, you know, being trapped in that damp building, basically excluded from everything that was going on outside that house, one of the most important points of reference to her was the chiming of the bells. It gave her a sense of time, it gave her a sense of orientation of where she was and her situation. So when they took these bells out and you will see that in her diary in one of those days in 1943, she said, I am completely upset and confused for a week already because I don't hear the bells. So this is also something, and there are so many, and this is also about what my talk is going about, there are so many of these entry points that always take you back to that incredible book, to that incredible place of this incredible girl Anne Frank, and this is only one of them. I must actually add to this information that it was to the relief of all the other seven people in hiding who were not able to sleep because of the same chiming of the bells. So they had very different kinds of experiences to that. Please allow me to say a few words to you, Professor Sneperdie Johan, if I may. We met many years ago for the first time when I was here, not in my current capacity as director of the Anne Frank house. I was still working in my previous job and I came to San Francisco and the Dutch console by the time, but from Ballhouse, I know. He took me to the campus because it was a wonderful exhibit. I think you made this exhibit about resistance in Dutch literature, a really beautiful one. And I was really, you know, not just impressed by the fact that there was a Dutch studies program on this campus in this esteemed university. I mean, I remember from the times I studied that UC Berkeley, I mean, that was UC Berkeley. That's why you wanted to go, right, instead of crowding over where I studied. So UC Berkeley and someone who accomplished this Dutch studies program established it here, I was incredibly impressed by that achievement. And I know, you know, coming from a small country, people from a small country usually are kind of disproportionately proud of its culture and history and art and, you know. But I was really proud to see that and actually, and I have a, hopefully, I can have the shine, that's likely because I came here, I said, I told you with the Dutch console with Bart van Ballhuis, we put a little late, you know, running a little late and here at the gate asking about parking spaces. And we saw across campus, we saw these signs and L. And we saw, it's amazing, it's not just that they managed to achieve a Dutch studies program, they even have their own parking spaces on campus. So my pride grew and grew and grew until, of course, you, dear Johan, you know, told us, well, it's not exactly meant for Netherlands, you know, our bumper stickers and L, it's actually, and I think we have one Nobel Laureate in the audience today, but from Stanford. So thank you so much for all your efforts, for your achievements, for your accomplishments. I'm not going to repeat everything, Jeroen has already mentioned that, but it's really a huge honor for me to give this inaugural lecture in what will possibly be a wonderful series of lecture in your name and honoring the achievements of everything you've done in the last, I think, 50 years. Thank you so much. Now I need to, I have to apologize upfront. I lost my glasses on the flight last weekend from Seattle to Berkeley. They haven't found it yet, Delta Airlines, you know, that's, so I was lucky to find cheaters at Walgreens, but unfortunately it's not the right diopter, so I might mix up things, but it's, I will hopefully be able to follow a bit of my texts as long. It's okay. Today, it's November 15th. It was the birthday of the boy behind me. His name is Isser Vogel. Isser Vogel was born today on this day, the 15th of November, 1929 in Amsterdam. The new Prince Gracht down the road from where the Anne Frank house is located and then across the Amstel River. Isser Vogel was the first child of a young Jewish couple. His mother, Rosa, and his father, Gerson, Gerson Vogel, Gerson being a tailor, working as a tailor in Amsterdam. And one wonders actually how he would have celebrated his birthday today, his 19th birthday today. One wonders whether he would have celebrated this in his hometown in Amsterdam with his children, grandchildren, maybe even great grandchildren, or maybe he would have spread out his wings and come to the United States like so many did, maybe even to California, maybe even to Berkeley. But Isser Vogel's 13th birthday was his last. In June, 1943, he was taken to the transit camp of Westerburg in the north of Holland and then on to the extermination camp of Sobibor in the eastern part of occupied Poland where they were cast upon a rival together with his mother and his younger brother, Moritz. I can only assume that none of you have ever heard of Isser Vogel, just like I had never heard of him until very recently. Not much more is known about his short life than that he was born on the 15th of November, 1929 and that his short life ended when he was only 13. The little boy has sunk into anonymity. And as five years after the end of the war, in 1950, his death was formally announced by the Dutch government in its official newspaper and you see the names of Isser Vogel highlighted here together with his little brother, Moritz, together with hundreds and hundreds of names of those who had not survived the Holocaust. Anonymity is not exactly the quality that can be described to this little girl. Anne Frank, Annalise Marie Frank, her full name. Four weeks old. She came into the world on the 12th of June, 1929, the year when Isser was born and departed from the same world when she was only 15. For her 13th birthday, she had been given a diary that would make her world famous after her death. She mainly wrote, rewrote her diary during the almost 25 months that she spent in hiding together with her family and four other people in what used to be called the Secret Annex, the Achterhuis, her Achterhuis on the Prinz Gragh Canal. After the war, the father, the only survivor of the eight people in hiding in the annex, edited his daughter's diary and found, albeit with some difficulty, a publisher who was prepared to publish it. The rest is history. Millions of copies of a diary have been sold worldwide and every year, it's more than one million people visit the hiding place, visit the Anne Frank house. The amount of books, publications about her, the number of documentaries, movies, stage plays are endless. The girl, this little girl, Anna-Lise Marie Frank, is hidden behind a wall of images, sometimes excessively referential and even sentimental, or, conversely, excessively critical, sometimes even derogatory. Over the years, she has become the symbol of all manner of things, and through her diary, her voice has been carried to all corners of the world. But we do not know how her real voice sounded. Issa Fogo and Anne Frank are just two of almost 18,000 Jewish children who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in concentration and extermination camps. As of recently, their names appear the recently unveiled National Holocaust Names Memorial in Amsterdam. It's a design by Daniel Liebeskind. And you see here, Anne-Lise Frank, Anne Frank, a memorial to remember the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands only to be murdered elsewhere in Europe. They remain in our hearts forever, along with all the other victims of the Holocaust, when we softly whisper their names. Issa Fogo, Anne Frank, may their memory be a blessing. The emptiness they left behind, the emptiness that was left behind by the loss of so many lives, lives is no longer apparent as it once was. When you visit Amsterdam today, it's difficult to break through the beauty of the city, to feel the loss lingering just behind all those facades. Yet there is one place where that emptiness is still visible. It's the secret annex, the hiding place here in a picture in the mid-1950s on Prinzengracht. And because of Anne's diary, it is probably the world's most famous empty space, despite the many visitors it usually receives. There's not much to see. This is, of course, the building, and to the left you see the house itself. There's not much to see there, and you won't be overwhelmed with facts about the Holocaust either. In essence, the secret annex lies in its emptiness. The entrance to the hiding place, those of you who have visited the house, covered by a bookcase, as you see in all its emptiness. And first and foremost, of course, this emptiness reflects the absence of Anne. Her diary writings can be seen there in the house where they were written as a silent messenger of a life cut short. Emptiness also reflecting the gaping wound in the heart of the father who had lost his entire family, his wife and both of his daughters. And of course, the emptiness of the secret annex also represents all those other empty places where those who fell victim to Nazi persecution once lived. But to us, to my organization, and to so many others, the meaning of the house, of the hiding place and the meaning of the diary, they go way beyond the tragedy in which it is rooted. You can see here the first edition of the diary published in 1947. And what I'd like to do tonight with you is to show you some examples of all those very different and various ways that people since the publication of the diary, how they have connected to Anne, how they have connected to her diary and how they have connected to a visit to the Anne Frank House, giving new meaning to their own lives but also providing new perspectives on the history of Anne. And I think it's only fitting, not just because I'm here, but also because of how the legacy actually developed. It's also, and here you see actually many of these translations of the diary. Diary has been translated in more than 70 languages. They can hardly find any language in which the diary of Anne Frank is not being translated. Also in Arabic, also in Farsi, also in many other languages. And I will show you later on in my talk a little, you know, maybe some bizarre examples of how people have connected to her. But this is the cliffhanger for later on. First, the United States. And what you see here is the diary, the American edition of the diary that was first published here in the US in 1952. And you see the first page from which you can derive that it was Eleanor Roosevelt who wrote the introduction to the diary in this edition and also in later editions, actually. That introduction was being included. And of course, the name of Eleanor Roosevelt had always been connected to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which had been formulated only a few years before the edition was being published by a commission under her leadership. And what really is striking when you read the introduction of Eleanor Roosevelt that she does not dwell at all on the Jewish suffering. She is actually placed emphasis on the consequence of the diary for the human spirit in general. Going away from the specific Jewish experience in which the diary and in which the story and legacy of them was rooted and going actually into the future. And what was really interesting to see that, and you see here Eleanor Roosevelt with one of the copies of the Declaration of Human Rights. And what's really interesting to see is that Otto Frank and his father, the sole survivor, who then, in a way, took care of course of the publication of the diary went along with this approach. And I think over the course of time that one can safely say that a more universal paradigm has always had the upper hand in the legacy of Anne Frank compared to the focus on the specific Jewish experience and history where it had been rooted. And I would like to highlight two aspects of this more universal paradigm which are relevant for basically how people later on connected to Anne Frank to her diary and I think also very relevant for what we're going to talk about, how Gen Z is already connecting to Anne Frank and how they will connect to her. The first is very much a theme of self-realization and a coming of age which played a key role in the legacy of Anne Frank. The title of the book has always been in the United States the diary of a young girl, a diary of a girl that came of coming of age. And this is really something that is also in the decades after the publication of the diary, something that has always been an entry point for young people in order to connect to Anne Frank apart from the history from where it came. They can easily connect to her, her voice resonates with them and this is also very much because of this aspect of the diary and it gives actually, I think, an element of timelessness to the legacy of Anne Frank because over the decades and over the years you see this as a fixed entry point for young people in order to connect to Anne Frank. The second element is something that came very much from what you see here, a poster of the stage play 1955 on the base of the diary which gave a huge boost to the legacy of Anne Frank and to the success of the diary. You see it here with Susan Strasberg in the role of Anne Frank and Joseph Schildkraut as Otto 1955 and it ended with a famous, which has become a famous quote from the diary, in spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart. A message of hope, a message of optimism. That is anchored in these words of the diary. You see it here actually and it's in the, I don't know if you, some of you recognize it where it is. It's Boise, Idaho. Okay. Boise, Idaho, it's the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial and it summarizes in a way how not just in the US, definitely it started here, but then also in other countries where you see the two elements, hope, optimism, human rights, very much characterizing the way this memory of Anne goes. And what is really important is the fact that really her father was very much on the same page with this. He was considering the diary of his daughter as he said, she is not a symbol of the past, she is a symbol of the future, which is in a way very problematic I think, but it's also something that he's firmly believed in and it's also very much the way he shaped this legacy for the rest of his life that was dedicated actually to the diary of his daughter. I will give you some of the examples. Label pins, you see, Anne is ubiquitous, you see her everywhere and this is very much Anne Frank the activist, working for good causes, fighting for good causes, resonating with young people who really wanted to engage in all kinds of good causes and this is a label pin of Anne Frank that she is their voice and it was only natural that during the, during those years in the 1950s and the 1960s that Otto Frank felt very strongly and engaged very strongly in the civil rights movement and here, and I'm going to try to start this video. This is, these are scenes of the premiere of the film The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959 where you can see that on the left, Shelley Winters, she won the Oscar that year for her role as the mother of Peter of the other family and of course you saw Dr. Martin Luther King together with his wife and Harry Balafonte all on the forefront of the civil rights movement and Otto felt very strongly about that, himself being a victim of racial ideologies, of racial theories, so he was really very much involved in the civil rights movement and maybe some of you might know Marion Anderson, the singer, Marion Anderson, famous for her Easter Sunday concert, 1939, she was supposed to perform in, I see you remember, she was Marion Anderson, the African-American soprano and she was supposed to perform on Easter Sunday, 1939, in Constitution Hall that was managed by the Daughters of the American Revolution and those Daughters of the Revolution said, well, Ms. Anderson, you know, unfortunately, because you're black, you can't perform in this hall and what happened then was Eleanor Roosevelt stepped in and she said, okay, then you're going to perform on the Lincoln Memorial and she gave a wonderful concert for 75,000 people. Easter Sunday, 1939, what links her to the Anne Frank story? I tell you, in the late 1950s, Otto Frank established the American Friends of the International Anne Frank Youth Center. Eleanor Roosevelt was member, Marion Anderson was member. So there was a strong, strong connection between the legacy of Anne Frank and the Civil Rights Movement in those years and it's actually still is because if I go to the next slide, you will see here a visitor from the, an African-American visitor to the Anne Frank house a few years ago. Those ideas of religious hostility, racial inferiority, it's just a challenge to us that we have got to nip those ideas in the bud before they begin to flower and prosper because we don't like to think that this could ever happen again, but it could happen again. So this is very something that originated in the 1950s and 60s, but still is very strong also among visitors to the Anne Frank house who are recognizing their own history in that emptiness of the house and what happened to the Anne Frank house. I quickly go to Germany, Germany perpetuates country and where the diary was published, was being published in 1950, two years before it was, before it was published in the US and it gave, as in other countries, the stage play, I just showed you the poster of, with Joseph Schildkraut have a huge boost to the sales of the diary first of all but also to how well known it became in European countries. And what I'm going to show you is a very short fragment of something, a very interesting element of what happened in the 1950s in Germany and I'll show, this is the founding, the first stone laying stone for a village for displaced persons in Wuppertal in Germany. It was an initiative of Father Dominic Pir, he was the Nobel Prize, the Peace Prize winner in 1958 and his initiative was to create this village for displaced persons named after Anne Frank in 1959 in Germany, very special. Half of the money that he won for the Nobel Peace Prize was dedicated, he gave to this initiative and he invited Otto Frank for the ceremony and you will see Dominic Pir here together with Otto Frank, putting this, there's no sound to it. But it's interesting what Pir said to Frank on this occasion, he said, and I quote him, we esteem your presence here as evidence that you forgave. This example is of more value than 1000 speeches against war, forgiveness, an element that we've seen in Germany over the years, we all remember probably Billy Brant kneeling or the monument of the Warsaw ghetto. You might remember Richard from Weizsächer saying May 8th, the date that the German, not to Germany's surrender, is a day of liberation. There is, it's not always very fortunate in Germany how they remember the war and how they remember Anne Frank, especially in 2017, when the German Deutsche Bahn thought we're going to name a high-speed train after Anne Frank. Okay, that's how I responded actually when I was, you know, when the German media called the Anne Frank house there, what do you think of this idea? Well, might not be such a great idea actually. Okay, you think so, right? My personal experience, later that year, I met with a group of German school children, 2017. A group of German school children. So we were talking about what Anne Frank means to them and also this kind of incident, it was withdrawn, of course, the idea about the Deutsche Bahn once they knew that it's not a great idea, okay, not gonna do that, but these school children, so when we were talking about it and I said, well, kind of bizarre, you know, name a train after Anne Frank in Germany, it's, you know. And I saw there, you know, they were hesitated. I said, what do you think? Well, you know, with Leopold, of course, might not be so fortunate to name a train after her, but Anne Frank is such an example to us. She is such an icon to us. So in a way, they did understand, okay, not a train, but definitely something that was huge value to them. And that was also, for me, something to consider when, and hopefully for all of us to consider that entry points to the story of Anne for different generations might be very different compared to how we relate to Anne Frank. And this was actually, for me, kind of a lesson to see that sometimes judgments are closing discussions, special with new generations, while they are opening it up to new ways of how to connect to Anne Frank. So let me see, yeah, oh, yes, the Netherlands. Yes, well, I told you we're proud of everything, you know, the small country, disproportionately proud of everything. Well, we cannot be very proud of the way we consider this whole story in the 1950s. Yes, the sound is good, yes, okay, thank you. Yeah, this article from a Dutch newspaper, 1956. The Achterhuis, the Anne Frank House will be demolished. 1956, one year after that stage play that made it so such a huge success. Demolishing the Anne Frank House? Yeah, demolishing the Anne Frank House. Mm, interesting. Americans came to Europe, to Amsterdam, especially after seeing the play, they wanted to visit Anne's house. They wanted to visit their hiding place. And all they found was a dump on the Prince of Rachkanel, which was closed, which he could not visit, and which was about to be demolished. They did not really understand. And what they did instead was writing letters to the Dutch government, to the Dutch embassy here in DC, and saying, I mean, what's going on there? Why, why, demolishing the Anne Frank House? And just to show you how the mood and the time, what times we lived in the 1950s in the Netherlands, one of the most precious part you have in your archives also always one or two precious documents that you think, okay, we need to keep this really well. And one of those documents is the letter that our minister of foreign affairs, by the time, I'm sorry, Agnes, you're representing the ministry of foreign affairs here, but this was in the 1950s, so a long time ago. For your time, it was Joseph Lunds, we know, because he answered to one of these Americans that complained and wrote this letter to the government. He answered, you know, it's difficult for Americans to understand that this building has no historic or cultural value at all. I'm gonna keep this letter. We have been talking about the Royal Family in the introductions here. And I'm showing you this because it's interesting to see how a country that has lost 102,000 Jews, 75% of the Jewish population by far the highest percentage in Western Europe compared to 35% in France, 30% in Belgium, Netherlands, 75%. And it's interesting how over the times of, in the 1950s and 60s, even in the 70s, the Netherlands managed to appropriate the story. And how the story of Anne Frank became really important for the Netherlands, trying to uphold a picture of the Netherlands. And you can see here, Queen Juliana, the grandmother of the current king. And so it was, you know, the Royal Family, they left the country in the first days of the invasion of the Nazi invasion, May 1940s. Queen Wilhelmina, her mother by the time during the occupation of the queen, she gave every week a speech from London to the Dutch audience, whoever was able to listen to it. And during those five years, she mentioned the fate of the Jews once. So it's very interesting to see how the country in the 1960s and 70s, and especially here with Otto Frank and Queen Juliana, managed to, in a way, appropriate the story of Anne Frank and include it in a way of culture of remembrance where the Netherlands was in way proud of its resistance. And the most interesting part I felt is the fact that Otto Frank himself always said, where did you find something similar as in the Netherlands? They helped us, as Jews. So it was really, and it only changed over in the 1980s and the 1990s when a much more balanced view of what had happened in the Netherlands took place. I'm going to two bizarre examples of the legacy of Anne Frank and also Gen Z in North Korea. It's being subtitled. I hope you can see the subtitles because it's a Dutch television program, a Dutch TV team, traveled to North Korea in 2003 and made. And I can, of course, only show you a part of this documentary, but I really would like to invite you of how a country that itself runs concentration camps can relate to the story of Anne Frank. The Orofdagboek of Anne Frank was released this year in the North Korean language. And since then it has been very popular among young people. Because of the lack of money, only a few thousand copies were printed, but the schools made 10,000 copies and since then Anne Frank has been obligated to teach at all middle schools. The K-1 crisis in the South Korea is a state of emergency. We are building society with the help of minors who are practicing for the K-1's homes today. So how did this become a big deal? So I took three thousand copies of this book and sent it out. But the students are really popular with this book. I think this is because the content of the book is good. The direction of trying to live a peaceful and happy life is the direction of the whole people, especially our people. What is the motivation to read the diary of the mother? I think our students have to read a lot of the names of the students, and I think the students have to read a lot of the names of the students. That's why we are reading the diary. My father-in-law told our students to read all the world-famous literature. He also told us that the world-famous book is the diary of Anne Frank. We, who grew up as the main characters of Kang Sung-dae-bok, read Anne Frank's diary. A little bizarre. I'm talking about bizarre. Anne Frank with a kafia. A picture taken about ten years ago, just around the corner of the Anne Frank house. A symbol of the Dutch BDS movement. A very painful picture, we felt. But it's not immediately clear what we see here. Of course we see Anne Frank with a kafia, with a symbol of the Palestinian people. But is the message here that Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews? Or is this what we've seen in many other examples, Anne Frank as a human rights activist? That's the way they present it at least. Unfortunately these pictures went out of the city quite quickly. But it's also to show you how once appropriations spread for many causes, you will also find more irreverential or more problematic appropriations of Anne. Like the one we just saw by North Korea and like this one that we saw in Amsterdam. All these appropriations, problematic, universal. It led in 1997 to a piece by Cynthia Ozick in the New Yorker. This is the title, Who Owns Anne Frank? It was, let me give you the quote from Cynthia Ozick in order to give you just an impression of what she thought about this. And what she also thought actually about Anne's own father and how he had shaped the legacy of Anne Frank. I quote Cynthia Ozick from this piece in the New Yorker. The diary has been bottle rights distorted, transmuted, reduced. It has been infantilized, americanized, sentimentalized, falsified, kitschified and in fact blatantly denied. Among the falsifiers have been dramatists, directors, Anne's own father Otto and the public. Readers and theater goers all over the world. Otto, her father, is complicit in a shallowly upbeat view of history. And she ends with saying, would history have been better served if it had been destroyed? End of quote by Cynthia Ozick. I think the examples I gave you just give you an insight in the very different ways people have connected to Anne Frank. And that is also kind of a starting point for what we, when we go into the future with a new generation with Gen Z. Gen Z? Oh gosh, they've come up with another generation label. Millennials, baby boomers, Gen Z. Now we already have Gen Alpha, a new generation. So first of all, the question will be, is there anything like Gen Z? Well, yeah, there is, but only in your head. What it actually is saying, and I will give you some of the arguments, is it's a market to your thing. You know, it's something made up by people who like to sell stuff to young people, give you a profile of a generation, and then marketing to this generation. Is there really something like Gen Z? Well, some people don't think so. And they say, well, first of all, it's not scientifically defined. There's a risk of stereotyping and generalization. You see differences, focus on the differences instead of the neglecting, and at the same time neglecting the similarities. Research mainly in advanced economies, it's mainly an upper class thing, this whole Gen Z thing. And of course, generations change over time. The baby boomers, but by the time their profile is not necessarily how they live nowadays. Gen Z, this would be Gen Z nowadays. I'd like to share a few facts with you. Who should be Gen Z? The ones who were born between 1995 and 2010. For me, the relevance is very much, most of them have grandparents after the, who were born after the war, which is really, really very different from the generations before them. Having a transmission, because you have talked about it with your grandparents, with your parents, is very different from when your grandparents cannot tell firsthand about what happened. A very distinctive characteristic of a Gen Z generation. 27% of the US population is Gen Z in 2022, growing very quickly to 35, 40% in the next years. A substantial group within the entire population, not just in the US of course, also in other countries. They are digital native. They don't know a world without the internet. They were born in a world where internet was already there, and that's their ecosystem. It's actually, especially in advanced economies, also the highest educated generation ever. Half of them identify from racial or ethnic minorities compared to in the baby boom generation, 22. A very diverse generation. And 16% identifies belonging to the LGBTQ plus community. It's almost double from the previous generation. What's the profile? Online ecosystem. That's where they're living. Constantly, between six and eight hours a day on social media, apps, and online websites. Constantly connected to the entire world. A world that operates speed, scope, and scale. They have a very short attention span. Are you recognized? If you don't grab them during the first 10 seconds that they see you, they're highly treasured authenticity and diversity. Key words if you want to communicate with Gen Z. And a strong emphasis on their identity formation. I'm not sure actually if that's very typical for Gen Z because I think among young people it's always been like that. Identity formation has always been very central in their lives. Now with a strong focus on these four elements. On the gender, on their sexuality, on their race, and on their ethnicity. A strong wish and desire to belong. And that combined with the fluidity. Standard categories of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnic do not exist anymore. It's fluid in between, in between, within these categories, in between these categories. A fine, great formation of identity. Most of the times of the combination of these elements. They love the language. They love to collaborate. And they love to be engaged in things. They have a huge appreciation of art and creativity. All the things I'm telling you is actually mainly from, yes, marketing research. And I'm hesitant to admit that I also got some information from a research from Stanford University. I'm sorry. And they have their own vocabulary. They have their own language. Okay. I was looking at TikTok for examples of how GNZ respond and connect to Anne Frank, and you can find hundreds of them. So I really could only, can only show you one. And this, it's this girl who, who, well, just look at the, look at the video. Oh, I'm sorry. And I know you need to be technical savvy in order to communicate. Anne Frank did not have the language to say that she was bisexual or not. She also was a child who died in a concentration camp and did not give permission for her diary to be published by her father. She intended to write a book about her experiences, not publish her diary. And so every time I see my fellow queers being like, Anne Frank, she was, she was bi. It's so amazing. It's like, you're just like outing a teenager who doesn't have the ability to speak for herself. It's gross. Effect of the day, Anne Frank was bisexual. And you see the text from the diary underneath. I don't know if you know that, that entry when Anne talks, writes about how she would like to touch the breasts of her girlfriend. It's a very moving, open entry in the diary. But it is immediately being appropriated by this, by this, by this girl and by a whole community because if you look at the likes of these Tiktok films, et cetera. So it's just one example of what I just showed you, elements of this Gen Z generation. And again, if you go on Tiktok, you will see hundreds of these kinds of films that are really all about either gender, sexuality, race, ethnic, and all those in different, in different combinations. They're on vocabulary. Well, just one example of that. I don't know. Do you know anyone recognized this? Okay. I didn't recognize any of this. A-map, a romantic, bi-romantic boy, that name, demigirl, demisexual, and B-farm going stealth, a vocabulary of Gen Z. So if you want to communicate with your grandchildren later on, go to some language lessons. Not Dutch studies, but go to their studies also because donate to Dutch studies and learn to, and go to this, to this. So it's really, and this is just one example, so you could really make a dictionary, a very interesting dictionary of their own vocabulary. And it's really some, I'm just going to skip this. This is an example of a website of Colab. You can write novels together and connect it to the world. It's called What Pound, and you can really, you know, you're connected to Gen Z's across the world and write a novel together. I'm going to. Okay. This is something that I would love to show you. I'm getting slowly to the end of my talk, but this is something I want to show you because Gen Z is not just this upper-middle-class advanced economy thing. I'm going to show you a workshop that I've been doing a few years ago in one of the townships in Cape Town, Masipu Malayla, and it's a project that we have been doing with, you might know him, Phillip Miller. He's the music composer of the works of William Kentridge, the South African artist. And together with Phillip, we've been working in a township of Cape Town with girls from the township, and it's all about the diarhyth and frank and music, music also from those chimes of the bells of the tower that we were talking about earlier on. And so just I invite you to watch. My favorite sentence from Anne's beautiful sentences is, only when I look into my own eyes can I find the truth. When I look at myself in the mirror, I ask myself, why are you like this? Don't be shy, be you, be brave. And so is kiss. Imagine working with your crush, with your family. We're going to take all of what you guys have done, and we're going to create lyrics. We will make it out of you. Yes. You're always going to make it out of you. There you go. I would like to tell you how you made me feel. Except now I need more power. So we can't just hang up. We had hoped to do that last year. We will do it next year, putting a soundscape into the Anne Frank house. And what this was done actually during lockdown. So when you hear them singing, he's the senator of my heart. It's all about the love affair between Anne and Peter. And Peter was the senator of her heart under COVID times. It's also, it was very moving because we all know the situation in these townships. And we all know what it means for especially these girls to be trapped in a, wherever they live in that township with oftentimes violent men around them. And so what you see is actually a community. When we started, what's a Jew? I don't know. Where is Amsterdam? I don't know. What happened during the Holocaust? I don't know. And all of a sudden, because we started this music project, all of a sudden they learned about that. It's, of course, the main interest is a very different entry point. The main interest is the love affair between Anne and Peter. The first kiss. You saw how excited they were about that. But doing so as using us as an entry point, they all of a sudden start to learn about the history that we want them to learn about. About the history of Anne Frank and the Holocaust. And some of these kids hopefully will come to Holland next year in order to perform near the Anne Frank house. And we're very excited about this. Just to show you that collaboration, art, creativity, can be a very important entry point to Gen Z whenever you... Maybe to conclude with a little bit of fun. This one, I show you a fragment of a piece of comedy. And some of you might have seen it because it premiered at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last year. I don't know if anyone was there. Oh, you want it? It's good that Ian doesn't trust me. It's boiling here. It does bring up an interesting question. Maybe we're coming at this from the wrong angle. What you're going to see is me. Yes, me. The director of the Anne Frank house. Inviting marketeers from Silicon Valley to change the gift shop of the Anne Frank house. It must be for Gen Z. It must be adapted for Gen Z. You can't have boring book shops in a museum. You have to make an exciting shop. So this film is about me. I'm actually a woman here in this room. And so this is the pitch of the marketeer company to the Anne Frank house in order to make their gift shop ready for Gen Z. I just clicked. Now, why young people are tuning out? This generation has access to tragedy in their pockets. It can be quite overwhelming. Scientists call this... Empathy. Trust me, this is a big win for us. The best way to cut through the noise is with a personal story. Anne Frank is relatable. Stars. They're just like us. Anne Frank wrote dirty jokes. She fought with her mother and she had a crush on Peter Van Pels. Probably just because she was around him all the time. I'm just saying Anne Frank is an icon. Her face should be everywhere. Is she talking about tote bags? Why not bookshelves? Maybe a collab with Ikea. Nothing like that. I was thinking we could come out with a line of leather-bound diaries. And we could have some of Anne's most inspiring quotes in the margins. Just little prompts to get people journaling. I know what I want. I have a goal. What's your goal? Is something wrong? I'm surprised you read the book. Of course I read the book. I did the audiobook. Selma Blair does the voice. I didn't know Selma Blair was Jewish. Oh yeah, last name's Bightner. She's a gay icon. We need to meet young people where they live. Why isn't Anne Frank on TikTok? Because she's dead. Auschwitz has a Twitter account. Do they? The original Thirstrap. Every modern brand is on social media. With a slight redesign of Anne's profile picture, I think we could really build some buzz. A redesign of her face? Just subtle. Nothing major. Just like a slight upturn of the mouth. Because the algorithm really prefers to smile. We do not manipulate photos of the Holocaust. We do not colorize images. Are you even Jewish? Legally you can't ask that. I'm sorry, did you just say Anna Frank is a brand? Like Campbell's Chunky Soup? Yeah, of course she's a brand. The Diary of a Young Girl is the best-selling book of all time behind the Bible. Why does everyone say that, as if she somehow got her wish? She sold more books than Sheryl Sandberg. Are you saying we should lean in? That was my post-it. Okay. And we switch back. Yes. But good comedy is always about serious things. And good comedy is making fun of serious things, but not forget the serious questions and dilemmas that behind also this. So let me give you, to conclude my talk, the key elements of what we need to do with GNZ. Incorporate visual platforms. Secure online presence. Very important. We need to be there. We need to be where they are. Snackable contents. Relatable content. Yes. But to reach out to GNZ, we need to think about how we can reach them where they are. And exactly what I said, with a short attention span, you need to grab them within that 10 seconds, because otherwise they won't be there. And you have a beautiful message that no one will listen. Take advantage of trends and individuals that are very popular with them. Influencers. You saw in this comedy, who was the influencer for that company, trying to take this message to the director of the Anne Frank house. Didn't really work well. Authentic diverse messages and refrain from judgments. Refrain from the way they connect to Anne Frank. It's really every contact you have, consider it as an opportunity. Consider it as an entry point to the story. And consider it as an entry point to further educate them about the things. And they love to be engaged. They love to be engaged. We work a lot with peer education, actively engaging young people. We have international Anne Frank youth networks. They love to work together with them. And we need to include them also into our organization. I need to rush. I know I'm running a little bit out of time, but I really would like to go back in time to Issa and Anne Frank. It's April 11, 1944. And we know it's a lovely spring day in Amsterdam. It's with a clear blue sky, almost 70 degrees outside. A mild breeze is blowing. A long, bitter cold winter is finally giving way to the first warmth of the year. Trees are budding, and it will not be long now before they will be in full bloom. It's a day full of yearning. Yearning for everything that has been missing for so long. The warm rays of the sun on your skin, fresh air, smell of nature awakening. Anne Frank sits at the desk in a musty building and riding one of the longest and, in my view, one of the most moving entries in her diary. A break in downstairs in the building makes her, once again, realize that she isn't hiding. Makes her think about being Jewish and what it means to her. She is scared, but determined to be brave and strong. She's ready for death, but she wants to live. She wants to make her mark on the world. She reflects on who she is and who she wants to be. A Jew, a Dutch, a woman, a woman with inner strength, with a goal, with opinions, with a religion, and with love. She's curious about other people. She has a very open mind. She's at the same time very confident and also insecure. She wants to make her voice heard. She has strong opinions, but she's also very, very vulnerable. Let me be myself and I'll be satisfied, she writes on her very day. Simple words expressing a deep-fell desire to discover who she is. Simple words also that could easily have been written by someone from Gen Z. We should open up to Gen Z even if they come up with the most bizarre ways of connecting to them. Because they are an opportunity for us to contact them, to teach them about Anne Frank. And yes, maybe they can also add new perspectives. It gives us a better understanding of the history of Anne Frank, the life story. Gives us a better understanding of this generation. And yes, maybe even gives us a better understanding of ourselves. And hopefully, hopefully, they will remember Anne Frank, they will remember Isophobe, and they will remember all those others who were not only prohibited from being their true self, but from being at all. Thank you very much. Well, dear friends, it is now my pleasure to conclude the very first Professor Johann Snapper lecture. I wanted to thank you all for coming. I wanted also to invite you all to join us for the reception so we can conclude in a festive manner. But I wanted to ask one final round of applause to honor Professor Johann Snapper and to also thank the speaker and to thank our speaker, Ronald Leopold. Please join us for the reception. Thank you all for coming. Thank you.