AMSTERDAM.- The Anne Frank House opened a new temporary exhibition: ‘Who Is Missing?’– The Jewish Lyceum 1941–1943. The exhibition follows the school with its Jewish pupils and teachers during its two years of existence. Every school day, the same question arises: Who is missing?

By order of the Nazis, all Jewish pupils are required to attend Jewish schools after the summer of 1941. This measure is one of many anti-Jewish decrees issued by the Nazis, through which Jews are increasingly isolated. Anne Frank and her sister Margot attend the Jewish Lyceum at Voormalige Stadstimmertuin 1, one of the 25 Jewish schools in Amsterdam. Their teachers are Jewish as well.

Sense of belonging

Anne and Margot are forced to leave their former school and find their way at their new one, together with their fellow pupils and teachers. They form new friendships and achieve good academic results. There are also familiar faces, such as Albert Gomes de Mesquita, Anne’s former classmate at the Montessori School. He later recalls his time at the Jewish Lyceum:

"According to my mother, I skipped happily on my way there. I probably enjoyed it so much because of the sense of belonging; we were all going through the same thing."

Missing

Teachers and pupils try to keep school life as normal as possible. But little is normal, especially in the 1942–1943 school year: pupils and teachers are arrested and deported or go into hiding, classes grow emptier and the teaching staff steadily shrinks. Yakov Arnon, a bookkeeping teacher, later reflects: "You walked into the school and you asked—or you didn’t ask, but you thought: who is missing? Not: who is still here? But: who is missing? You never knew whether those who were gone had been arrested or were in hiding. They were gone. For the school, that was a terrible thing." (Absent, 2001)

Anne and Margot attend the Jewish Lyceum for one year; on 6 July 1942 they go into hiding with their parents in the Annex on Prinsengracht. "Now I look at my own life and realise that one era of it has been irrevocably closed. The carefree, happy schooldays will never return," Anne writes in her diary on 7 March 1944.

Murdered

The Jewish Lyceum ultimately exists for two years. In total, more than 500 pupils are taught there by 44 teachers. Half of these pupils, including Anne and Margot, and 35% of the teachers are murdered during the Holocaust by the Nazis and their collaborators.