AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialUniversalDeclarationOfHumanRights

The Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

complex and educational park in

Boise, Idaho Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown ar ...

near the Boise Public Library and the

Greenbelt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which h ...

, the centerpiece of which is a statue of

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

; it is jointly maintained by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights and the Boise Department of Parks and Recreation, and is the only human rights memorial in the U.S. Designed by Idaho Falls architect Kurt Karst, a sapling of the

Anne Frank Tree The Anne Frank tree ( nl, Anne Frankboom or, incorrectly, ''Anne Frank boom'') was a horse-chestnut tree (''Aesculus hippocastanum'') in the city center of Amsterdam that was featured in Anne Frank's ''The Diary of a Young Girl''. Anne Frank d ...

and quotations from some sixty notables and unknowns (including poets, activists, politicians and diplomats, those who survived the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, and those who did not) are prominent installations. It also features one of the few installations where the full text of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...

is on permanent public display. The park has been recognized and accepted by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. It was thoroughly renovated in September 2018, with an outdoor classroom and a new sculpture, "The Spiral of Injustice." Museum researcher Brigitte Sion has written that in seeking to use Anne Frank as a symbol for various universal and parochial issues, the memorial offers a sanitized version of Anne Frank that denies the reality of her history. Sion writes "Nothing in the Boise memorial's mission statement, its official literature, or at the site itself directly identifies Anne Frank as a Jewish victim of the Holocaust or explains the reason for her hiding, let alone for her arrest, deportation, and death in a Nazi concentration camp". The site not only serves as a convenient staging area for rallies, marches, and protests (and more generally as a contemplative spot), it is where the Boise Police Department takes their newly commissioned officers before field training.

Vandalism

In early May 2017 the plaque featuring the beginning of the complete Universal Declaration of Human Rights was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti in red marker; more generally two different areas of the site were also defaced over the next few days with racist slurs against black people and Jews causing $20,000 in damage, due in part to the botched initial attempts at repair. The vandalism, the first since the memorial's dedication in 2002, is being investigated as a potential hate crime, and numerous donations for repair have poured in. In December 2020, the memorial was defamed with pieces of paper reading "we are everywhere" and depiction of a swastika. This prompted Mayor

Lauren McLean Lauren Stein McLean (born October 20, 1974) is an American politician and entrepreneur serving as the mayor of Boise, Idaho. McLean served as a member of the Boise City Council from 2011 to 2019, and as council president from 2017 to 2019, bef ...

to say, "Bad actors who use racist and violent rhetoric are not welcome in this community."

Gallery

AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialVideo1.ogg, A brief video clip of the memorial's Quote Walls AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialBenches.ogv, A brief video clip at the memorial's centerpiece AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialQuoteWall.jpg, Running water AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialCenotaphDetail.jpg, Cenotaph detail AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialOrchids.jpg, Orchids left in homage AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialSapling.jpg, One of the only 11 Anne Frank saplings in the United States AnneFrankHumanRightsMemorialAntifaschistischeAktionSticker.jpg, An Antifa sticker placed on the representation of Anne Frank's diary

Notes

{{Portal bar, Genocide, Judaism, Visual arts Anne Frank Articles containing video clips Boise, Idaho Antisemitic attacks and incidents in the United States Human rights Jews and Judaism in Idaho Monuments and memorials in Idaho Sculptures in Idaho Holocaust memorials Vandalized works of art in Idaho Outdoor sculptures in Idaho 2002 establishments in Idaho Public art in Idaho

Vandalism

Gallery

See also

Notes