I was a little apprehensive walking into the Chowringhee High School premises on 26th October. There had been a long hiatus in classes because of the puja vacations and I had met the students but once before, in the presence of two of my colleagues. I wasn’t sure they would recognize me, let alone remember what we had discussed in the last session. The arrival of an energetic bunch of young people who seemed to want to be in this classroom was somewhat reassuring.
As they settled down, I enquired about the assignments they had been allotted for the holidays — had anybody been able to find some time for it? The enthusiasm I had sensed seconds ago wilted right before my eyes. The class was silent, till one girl whispered that she had read half of Anne Frank:The Diary of a Young Girl, which was the reading assignment set for the holidays. Did nobody find the time to talk to anyone about their experience of the partition? I pressed because they had been very enthusiastic about the prospect of talking to their elders and hearing stories of their pasts. Silence. Then one boy from the back row offered that he had not been able to find anybody around him who had experienced the partition, or heard its stories. Another student ventured that though they had relatives in the family who knew about this, they had passed away, their stories with them. I realized that the partition of 1971 was truly merely the matter of the history textbook for these students. The distance between the event and their lives was more the years that separated the two. It did not flow through their families as stories and anecdotes, it did not live and breathe through their opinions of everyday. It was simply a date to be memorized.
The itinerary for the day, an immersive discussion stemming from the experience of engaging with individuals who had witnessed mass violence in their lives, gave way to the story of the Frank family. It was important that they relate to the past in a more intimate way. I requested the girl who had read some of The Diary of a Young Girl to share the story with the class. I then gave them the context of World War II — they knew that it had occurred, but were unclear about the details. Their prompts about World War II included Nazis and Hitler but they were unaware of the existence of the concentration camps and the genocide. I told them about Anne Frank and how she had to go into hiding with her family because they were being persecuted. That while in hiding, Anne kept a note of what was happening in her everyday life, giving us a window into what life was like for her for the length of two years. That in the end the Frank family was betrayed by someone, discovered by the Gestapo and taken to the working camps where everyone but Otto Frank perished. That we can read this book now because Miep Gies, one of the friends of the Frank family, had thought of saving it in case the family survived the concentration camps. We threaded in and out of the story of Anne’s life while discussing the rampant violation of human rights by the Nazis, focusing on the plight of the Frank family, the Van Pels and Pfeffer, the occupants of the Secret Annexe. The students were unaware that the genocide was not limited to the Jews but included the Romanis, the ethnic Poles, the Slavs, those who were considered ‘incurably sick’ and many, many others.
We discussed in length the life that was led inside the Annexe, the lengths that were taken to simply survive. I asked them if they liked to spend days at the end inside their house. Some of them nodded that they liked doing so. Then they were asked how many days at a stretch they like staying home without getting out even for a brief while — not go to the neighbourhood store for a packet of biscuits, not meet their friends for a round of cricket, not go to the movies or watch TV. To not be able to open the windows when they wanted, for fear of someone spotting them. They looked very uncomfortable at the thought and professed that they would not be able to tolerate it. We spoke about the closeness of our families, the shared spaces of our everyday lives and how we find our own little corner somewhere. They started thinking of and discussing how difficult it must have been for so many people to share such a small space without having the seemingly ordinary option of even taking a walk if they pleased. We talked about how we take for granted our school life while Anne had to take on Miep’s name to take a correspondence course. Of how the Jews were made to go a special Jewish school and were banned from taking public transport, and could only shop at specific places. Surprise, sometimes disbelief, flitted through their faces during the course of the discussion, and many an arched eyebrow was seen. They related this treatment of other people to the violation of human rights we had discussed in the previous session. We spoke of the bravery and resilience of the friends of the family who helped them during this time, risking their own lives to ensure the safety of others. One of their teachers shared the story of how one brave doctor saved the lives of an entire region of people by injecting them with a dead strain of the yellow fever virus. As news of an outbreak of infectious yellow fever spread (tests showed the presence of the virus in the blood), the Nazis were hesitant to go to the area, saving hundreds of lives. The importance of standing up for the right thing, even if it was against a ruling power, was emphasized.
The session ended with the class wanting to know more about the life of Anne Frank and her experiences. Some heads were vigorously nodding when I suggested that since they couldn’t read the book over the holidays, perhaps we should read portions of Anne’s diary during our time together. They said they looked forward to it and asked me when we were going to meet again. As I walked out of Chowringhee High School that afternoon, I realized that while future interactions with this bunch of students would bring many emotions to the fore, apprehension would never again be one of them.
Anushka Halder