2:51pm Thursday 24th April 2008
SCHOOLS can visit Anne Frank's bedroom without leaving the country, thanks to an exhibition at Blackburn Cathedral.
Visitors to the Anne Frank and You exhibit will be able to experience a life-size replica of Anne's bedroom, where she wrote her celebrated diary while hiding from the Nazis.
Already some 73 schools - just under 5,000 children - have booked slots to visit the exhibition which will include the "secret annexe" above business premises in Amsterdam where the Frank family, and four other Jews, spent more than two years in hiding before 1944.
To reach the replica secret annexe room, visitors must pass through a multi-media display exploring the themes that dominated Anne's life and a tunnel on the Holocaust.
The exhibit shows how the themes of Anne's diary - prejudice, racism, freedom and democracy still apply in the 21st Century. Alongside excerpts from her diary, examples of present day issues will also be displayed.
The cathedral's dialogue development officer, and chair of the Anne Frank in Blackburn Committee, Anjum Anwar, said: "We are thrilled so many young people will come. The fact it is offered free to the people of Lancashire is an opportunity that should not be missed.
Let us hope that what emerges from this experience is a determination to ensure diaries like Anne Frank's do not have to be written again, because the attitudes that led to her suffering have begun to be transformed."
Anne Frank and You is presented by exChange, the interfaith development agency of Blackburn Cathedral from May 1-28.
The exhibition will be open Monday to Friday 9.30am-5pm, Saturdays 10am-3.15pm and Sundays 12.30-3.30pm.
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