Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Statues of Historic Figure: Anne Frank - Oranjestad, Aruba

Anne Frank
Oranjestad, Aruba


N 12° 30.977 W 070° 02.130



Short Description: 

A statue of Dutch young author and holocaust victim Anne Frank is located Queen Wilhelmina Park on L.G. Smith Blvd. in Oranjestad, Aruba.

Long Description:

A life size bronze statue of of Anne Frank depicts the young Jewish holocaust victim standing on a 4' high by 3' square granite base. Frank is barefoot and wearing a knee length dress, Her hands are hands are bound in front of her and her head is leaning back, looking towards the sky.

The statue was created by Dutch artist Joep Coppens and financed by the Fundacion RESPETA BIDA….semper corda (RESPECT LIFE….always remember Foundation) It was installed in Queen Wilhelmina Part on the anniversary of Anne Frank's birth, June 12th, 2010.



Each of the four sides of the base contains the quote from her diary is a different language - Papiamento, English, Dutch and Spanish. The English side is inscribed:


"How wonderful is it that nobody 
need wait a single moment to improve 
the world!"

                                                                                            Anne Frank

Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl from Amsterdam who lost her life in a Nazi concentration camp and became famous through her diaries. She was born on June 12, 1929. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, she was hidden from capture in a private home. The world would know little of her life but for the diary she kept while hidden in the secret annex of this house. Anne had hoped to write a novel about her experiences but she was discovered and arrested before she could fulfill her wish. She was transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in March 1945, another Jewish victim of the Holocaust.

Her diary was discovered by her surviving father, Otto Frank, soon after the war. He saw that it was published and it soon became an international best-seller. Thus, her story has become widely known and has been the basis for several plays and films, most notably 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank.

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