Why Anne Frank must be taught in schools

The decision by any school to refuse to teach The Diary of Anne Frank should concern every Australian who values education, democracy and social cohesion.

This is not simply a debate about a book. It is a debate about whether schools have a responsibility to teach young people the consequences of hatred, prejudice and the dehumanisation of others.

Anne Frank was not a historian, politician, or military leader. She was a child. That is precisely why her diary matters.

Through Anne’s words, students encounter history not as a collection of dates and statistics, but as the lived experience of a young girl whose hopes, fears, ambitions, and frustrations are instantly recognisable to teenagers today. Her diary transforms the Holocaust from an abstract event involving six million murdered Jews into a deeply personal story about a family trying to survive in a world consumed by hatred.

The Holocaust remains one of humanity’s darkest chapters. Nazi Germany systematically murdered six million Jews and millions of others, including Roma, people with disabilities, political dissidents, homosexuals, and prisoners of war. Yet the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words. It began with conspiracy theories. It began with discrimination, scapegoating, and the gradual acceptance of the idea that some people were less worthy than others. Sound familiar?