By Cindy Mindell

Some kids related to the cramped attic space, others to the way the families shared the little they had. One girl commented on the way the heroine found the bright side, despite the difficult situation. An African-American student spoke about being different and separate, then said that she could relate when the heroine was given her first pair of heels.

Most of the 98 eighth graders from Western Middle School (WMS) in Greenwich had heard about the story of Anne Frank, but didn’t know how it ended. Until last week, when they got to experience “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Westport Country Playhouse.
The field trip was funded by UJA Federation of Greenwich, which maintains a special fund for educational programs. “It’s very hard to wrap your head around numbers like one-and-a-half million children who were murdered, but the story of one child can stay with you,” says UJA Federation executive director Pam Ehrenkranz. “There’s something in seeing live theater that goes beyond reading a book or doing classroom work. It appeals to your intellect and your emotions and connects you to the story on a more visceral level.”
“The kids were really engrossed in the show, especially the ending,” says Marlene Gilbert, a school chaperone whose son is in eighth grade. Gilbert, co-president of the school’s PTA and immediate past president of UJA Federation’s Women’s Division board, was approached by Ehrenkranz to help organize the trip. The Greenwich Public Schools’ PTA Council runs Arts in Education, a district-wide program that raises funds to connect students to curriculum-related cultural experiences. “The play was a perfect fit,” Gilbert says.
“The ending came as a real surprise,” she says. “The play had been upbeat and hopeful, and you could hear the kids gasping. They later talked about how sad it was.”
WMS draws from both wealthy and poorer areas of Greenwich, and is the most ethnically diverse among the district’s three middle schools, Gilbert says. “This was a great opportunity for the students,” she says. “The PTA couldn’t afford to send them all to the show without UJA funding.”
UJA Federation’s educational fund is supported by many private donors. In 2005, the agency used the fund to send more than 2,000 Greenwich-area students to see the documentary film “Paper Clips” at the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford. The film chronicles an after-school Holocaust education class at Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee, where students collected six million paper clips from around the world and created a display in a donated railway car that had been used by the Nazis to transport Jews.
“We are committed to sending Jewish and non-Jewish kids to these kinds of experiences that help them understand that the lessons of the Holocaust are very, very important in today’s world, and not just to the Jews,” Ehrenkranz says.
The play effectively introduced the middle-schoolers to the Holocaust, a subject they begin to study in November, Gilbert says. The students will read the diary and watch the 1959 film adaptation of the play, and read “Night” by Elie Wiesel.
“We were so excited that the kids got to go and experience the play,” says WMS principal, Terry Starr-Klein. “They came back with so many positive comments. This is whetting their interest in the subject matter and they will be able to come back to the play and discuss it when they read the diary and see the film.”
School staff were able to share their own experiences with the students during class discussions the day after the trip. One teacher, who visited Amsterdam over the summer, brought in photos and books from the Anne Frank House.
Starr-Klein told the students a story from her high-school years. “In the early ’60s, I went to Camp B’nai B’rith in the Poconos for BBYO leadership training,” says the Chicago native. “Some of the kids went to Amsterdam and came back with their stories. One of the young women was standing in line at the Anne Frank House and felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and a gentleman said, ‘You remind me of Anne.’ It was Otto Frank.”