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»Anne Frank Day Care Center« in Tangerhütte: fierce discussions about a renaming

Photo: Peter Gercke / dpa

After fierce criticism of a possible name change of the daycare center "Anne Frank" in Tangerhütte, the city council is positioning itself against the plans, according to a media report. On Wednesday, the city council will unanimously position itself against the request to rename the daycare center," said Werner Jacob (CDU), chairman of the city council of the »Welt«, according to a preliminary report. Accordingly, all parliamentary group chairmen support a corresponding position paper of the CDU.

The signatories of the statement, which is available to Die Welt, are the parliamentary groups CDU/FDP, UWGSA, SPD, Die Linke, WG Zukunft, WG Altmark and WG Lüderitz. The factions of the city council of the unified municipality of the city of Tangerhütte call on the mayor Mr. Brohm to give a clear rejection to this renaming," says the statement with reference to mayor Andreas Brohm (non-party).

"World explorer" instead of Anne Frank?

Brohm had announced in the morning that the discussions in the case were still ongoing, "without a decision being made at the moment." Brohm wrote that the background to the planned renaming was a renewal process towards open work, which the daycare center had undergone in the past 14 months. "Long before the current discussions and events, the discussion already arose at the beginning of 2023 to make this fundamental change in concept visible to the outside world by changing the name of the institution in order to visibly mark this fundamental new beginning."

The planned name change stems from the wishes of parents and educators and should soon be submitted to the city council for a decision, wrote the »Magdeburger Volksstimme«. In the future, the institution will be called "World Explorers".

According to the head of the daycare center, Linda Schichor, the children's council of the facility is said to have chosen a name that is more child-friendly. The story of Anne Frank is elusive, especially for younger children. "We wanted something without a political background," Schichor said.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1929 to Jewish parents. Her family fled from the Nazis to the Netherlands in 1933. From 1942 to 1944 she hid in a secret annex. During this time, Anne Frank wrote a diary that is one of the most widely read works in world literature. In 1945, Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15.

Historical oblivion of those responsible?

The claim of the daycare center management that the name "Anne Frank" is unsuitable and difficult to convey to children testifies "rather to a historical oblivion of those responsible," according to "Welt" in the statement of the parliamentary groups. This oblivion of history is a "breeding ground for conspiracy theories and hostility to democracy, including anti-Semitism. A culture of remembrance makes sense, because we owe it to our children and future generations to explain what it means to live in peace and freedom!« History teaches us that this cannot be taken for granted and that these values must be defended." The "current events" made this "even more insistent."

City council chairman Jacob said that the request to rename the daycare center came from the ranks of the daycare center's leadership. "The management of the daycare center is new and wanted to implement a new pedagogical concept. They wanted to document this new concept with a new name," said Jacob. So far, there has been no application for renaming. "I think there was simply political naivety behind the daycare center's request and a lack of history – I can't find any other words for it," said Jacob. "The head of the daycare center is still very young, a different generation than us. I'm 68 years old, and we still have the memory of the National Socialist era in our DNA." As mayor, however, Brohm "should have recognized the significance of such a step in terms of the politics of remembrance and should have cleared away the name change, which was superfluous anyway, from the outset."

Criticism from the Anne Frank Educational Center and the Auschwitz Committee

The Anne Frank Educational Centre saw a possible renaming as a fatal signal. This is especially true in view of the growing anti-Semitism in all parts of society, said director Deborah Schnabel. The renaming would contribute "to the invisibility of Jewish life and Jewish victims' stories, the foundations of our culture of remembrance."

The International Auschwitz Committee also criticizes the long-cherished plans for a name change of the "Anne Frank" daycare center in the town of Tangerhütte in Saxony-Anhalt and calls for this to be reconsidered.

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