BERLIN (JTA) — Madame Tussauds in Berlin unveiled a wax figure
of Anne Frank depicted sitting at her desk, pen in hand, smiling
dreamily. The unveiling took place last week amid some criticism
about including a Holocaust victim at such a frivolous location,
according to the Bild Zeitung, Germany’s most popular daily.
Others say that as long as there is information about the life
and death of Anne Frank it is appropriate. Anne died at age 15
at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp about a month before the
camp’s liberation in April 1945. The best-known photographs
snapped of the young diarist by her camera-happy father, Otto —
the only immediate family member to survive the Holocaust — show
young Anne smiling. A museum spokeswoman, Nina Zerbe, told Bild
Zeitung that the display includes information about Anne in
German and English, and she is presented in the context of the
room in which she hid. “This is a three-dimensional history
lesson for visitors,” Zerbe said.