The former director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam will be speaking at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Dallas Holocaust Museum, during a program for two of the museum's current exhibits.
Cor Suijk, director emeritus of Amsterdam's Anne Frank House, is going to speak at a special reception for the Dallas Holocaust Museum's "The Ritchie Boys: Secret Heroes" and "The Anne Frank Story" exhibits, which are going on now at the museum.
"As a teenager growing up in Nazi-occupied Holland, Suijk watched acts of anti-Semitism metastasize in the face of indifference and outright hatred," according to Dallas Holocaust Museum news release.
Suijk hid Jews during the Holocaust, but when Nazi's discovered that he was trying to help Jewish families escape, Suijk was deported to a camp.
After the war, Suijk had a career as a tax inspector, but Otto Frank — Anne Frank's father — asked him to become the Anne Frank House director, so Suijk did. Since then, he has dedicated his life to supporting the Anne Frank House and educating younger generations about the Holocaust.
The exhibits, which Suijk will speaking on behalf, reveal information about the lives of people who were impacted by the Holocaust.
The Ritchie Boys exhibit, which lasts through Aug. 27, introduces nine men who were part of a group of mostly German and Austrian boys that immigrated to America and then were drafted in the U.S. Army. They received training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Because of The Ritchie Boys' knowledge of the German language, culture and mentality, they helped in the war in ways that American-born soldiers could not.
The Anne Frank Story exhibit, which lasts through June 30, follows her life from her birth in Frankfurt, Germany, to her death at the Bergen-Belsen camp and addresses her experiences during the Holocaust. As a part exhibit, photos from Anne Frank's family albums and other historical images are used, in addition to entries from her diary.
For more information about the special reception and the Dallas Holocaust museum, call (214) 741-7500 or visit www.dallasholocaustmuseum.org.