Exhibit on “French Anne Frank” in Mobile

“Helene Berr, A Stolen Life” will be displayed at Spring Hill College in Mobile from March 28 to Aug. 10, at the Marnie and John Burke Memorial Library.

Berr is regarded as “the French Anne Frank.”

This exhibition is based on the journal written by Berr, a young Jewish French woman, whose promising future was brutally cut short by Vichy Government’s laws and the extermination plan imagined by the Nazis.

Berr was 21 years old when she started her journal. The exhibition follows her steps through Paris under the German Occupation, perceiving the daily experience of the unbearable, oscillating between hope and despair, until her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz in 1944.

After her death, her diary was given to her fiancé. In 1992, Berr’s niece found him and urged publication of the diary. It was given to France’s Holocaust museum in 2002.

In 2008 the diary was published in France and the first printing sold out immediately.

This exhibition, curated by Karen Taieb and Sophie Nagiscarde, was designed, created and circulated by the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris, France) and made possible through the support of SNCF Railroad. SNCF had been requisitioned by the German occupying forced to transport 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims to the German border, where they were ultimately taken to Nazi extermination camps.

“We are thrilled to be hosting such a significant Jewish history exhibit in the Burke Memorial Library that reflects global humanity issues important to all,” said Gentry Holbert, Director of Library and Information Resource Services at Spring Hill College. “This exhibit feeds into our Jesuit mission of maintaining an informed dialogue with the world’s cultures and religion while providing our students and community with active learning and involvement activities concerning social justice and the dignity of all human lives.”

The exhibit opened at the Alliance Francaise d’Atlanta in Georgia on Jan. 22. It has also been displayed at the French Embassy in Washington and at the United Nations.

“Hélène Berr, A Stolen Life” will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. most weekdays; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays; and 2 to 6 p.m. on Sundays.