Antigua, Guatemala, Dedicates Anne Frank Statue Amid Noisy Protests

By Jerry Klinger

ANTIGUA, Guatemala —  Though the weather threatened, and Covid leered increasingly, menacingly about us, an Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial was dedicated in Antigua, Guatemala, September 3.

The Memorial is sited in San Sebastian Park across the street from the National School for Girls No. 2, Antonio Castro y Escobar.  At the other side of the park are the barred-off ruins of San Sebastian Cathedral.

The location has a special meaning.  San Sebastian was murdered by the Romans.  His young body was riddled with arrows for the State crime of being a Christian.

The site selection was chosen, with great political courage, by the Mayor of Antigua, Victor Hugo del Pozo.

The beautiful bronze interpretive sculpture is by noted Jerusalem sculptor Sam Philipe.  Conceived and funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP), it was delivered after a year long Covid delay to the Jewish Community of Guatemala two months ago.

Without the partnership of JASHP and Rebeca Permuth de Sabbagh, President of the Jewish Community of Guatemala, the Memorial would not have happened.

A series of engraved Jerusalem Stone panels are attached to the bottom of the “Anne” explaining the Memorial’s meaning, its purpose.

One panel is a quote from Anne Frank’s famous diary found by her father. He was the only survivor of the family from the death camps.  Anne, though terrified and self-imprisoned in the family’s attic hiding place as the Nazi jackals and their antisemitic supporters sought out Jews to be murdered, never lost her sense of optimism, her belief in a better future, her belief in people.

It read: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

The second panel succinctly explains about the Holocaust. Surprisingly, fewer and fewer know what the Holocaust was.

“Of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, 1939-1945, 1.5 million were children.  Anne Frank was one of them.”

The third stone panel is by far the most important to the meaning and purpose of the Memorial.  Its short eleven words resonate powerfully.

“Children are the ultimate victims of adult hatred, bigotry, and ignorance.” 

Former President Reuven Rivlin of Israel commented on the first Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial, again donated by JASHP, that is sited adjacent to a girl’s school outside of Jerusalem in Maaleh Adumim.

“Children are indeed, often victims of adult hatred, bigotry, and ignorance, and I hope there will be wide interest in your important effort.

I certainly can agree with you that when all people, everywhere, protect the children of today, peace will be one step closer.”

Though further restricted by an emergency Covid decree issued by the President of Guatemala the night before, the program of dedication moved forward.  The German Ambassador canceled.  A government minister canceled.  A series of readings of essays written by the children from the nearby school were canceled.

We reduced our numbers and spacings.  The Ambassadors from Israel and Colombia, plus other ministerial representatives, Guatemalan Congressmen, and a representative for Mayor Hugo, who was self-quarantined with Covid, plus friends, community members, and more did attend.

The program area was cordoned off with yellow tape.  Heavily armed police guarded us.

On the other side of the yellow tape, anti-Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial demonstrators gathered loudly, pounding drums, banging on metal objects, screaming, yelling, waving at us menacingly with their children in tow who shook their little fists at us.  Signs with “epithets” were displayed.  One extra-large sign displayed the Palestinian flag.

I do not speak Spanish, but I understood the words Israel and Jews easily enough.

When it was my turn to speak, though, in English, I was understood.  I spoke of the meaning of the Memorial.

“Children are the ultimate victims of adult hatred, bigotry, and ignorance.  Children are the hope for the future, for all people.”

The words were understood, received, and loudly applauded.

The banging and screaming of the protestors on the other side of the yellow tape continued.

Guatemala is an extraordinary friend of Israel and the Jewish people.  Guatemala has the only Holocaust Museum in Central American.

Rebeca Permuth de Sabbagh, Father Patrick Desbois, Jerry Klinger

In the audience sat a Catholic Priest, White Collar, in traditional black attire.  He is an internationally acclaimed and honored human rights hero and activist, Father Patrick Desbois.  Father Desbois founded Yahad in Unum.  He has worked to find the unfindable, to give memory and document what has been denied, the personalized Einsatzgruppen Mass murder sites of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust.  He seeks out the sites and documents the testimonies before they are forgotten, of the eyewitnesses to the mass murder by the traveling death squads.

His website explains his purpose, remembering the past to shape the future.

“Our work is to encourage all societies to examine the darkest chapters of their history and to speak out against the current scourge of genocide.”

Risking his own life repeatedly, he ventures into the rabid, foaming lions’ mouths of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and places of utter darkness to save, to rescue, those who would become the victims of hate, and bigotry marked for death.

The dark hydra of unchecked hate lurks beneath the surface of any society. It must always be confronted.

Mario Permuth, Rebeca’s father, was a respected attendee of the dedication. He has also risked much for peace.  He was a key member of the National Reconciliation Commission that ended Guatemala’s thirty-six-year Civil War and armed conflict that claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 Guatemalans.  Mario Permuth, behind the scenes, on behalf of a direct request from Shimon Peres (who had served as prime minister and president of Israel) helped put the elements together to begin the “Peace Process” between Israel and the Palestinians.

The dedication closed with the sound of the Shofar blown by the Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Guatemala.

The dedication was over. The haters went to work.  Antigua’s City Facebook page was filled with anti-Memorial comments.  Some were blatantly anti-Semitic.

The haters’ tactics changed to legal arguments about site selection, appropriateness, the patrimony of Antigua, and what does a Jewish girl from Europe’s story have anything to do with the historic feel of Spanish Colonial Antigua.

They demanded the Memorial be removed and the feel of San Sebastian be returned to its Colonial past.

The haters did not think very far ahead of themselves.  Returning San Sebastian Park to the Colonial era feel meant affirming Spanish Colonial racism, religious bigotry, societal oppression, and enslavement of the indigenous peoples.

I seriously doubt the haters of the Memorial have ever seen the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway play South Pacific.  In 1949 South Pacific was extremely controversial because of a one and half minute song was added about racial tolerance and human understanding.  The song alone nearly scuttled South Pacific from touring the American South.

The message of the song’s lyrics:

“You’ve got to be taught, before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate.”

The anti-Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial protestors were making our case for bringing the Memorial to Antigua.  They had brought their children with them, to infect them, to witness the hate they themselves carried that had little to do with the Memorial in San Sebastian Park.

Mayor Victor Hugo del Pozo has a fight on his hands.

No one ever said, doing the right thing is easy.

A new Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial is being fabricated for Addis Ababa.  It will be dedicated January 27, 2022, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Jerry Klinger is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.