Anne Frank lives on, immortalised in wax!

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: The Berlin branch of the Madame Tussauds wax museum is now a proud owner of a wax statue that would sure have given the Nazi soldiers goose bumps. Anne Frank, whose diary was a witness and recorder of the trauma that was meted out to the 13 year old girl, has now been chiselled in wax based on that very record of hers. The figure of Frank looks expectantly from her desk. She is surrounded by things that played an important part in her daily life, most prominent amongst them is her diary. Magazines about the latest trends in cinema and theatre, a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, a casket which holds the key to her diary – surround the teenager. Her survival tales are now synonymous with the gruesome World War II. Her capability to withstand pain is juxtaposed against the cruel reality of the Nazi concentration camps. Anne Frank’s statue has been created in the context in which she lived and breathed – the war-torn Amsterdam of the 1940s. Anne Frank’s statue is placed next to that of Sophie Scholl, an activist executed by the Nazi regime for her involvement in the White Rose, a non-violent German resistance group. Also, in a situation that is nothing less than a chilling irony, the wax statue of Hitler is in the next room. Anne Frank lived on, and so will her dreams. No Hitler – real or in wax – can wipe that out.