Cast meets Anne Frank neighbor

The cast and crew of “The Diary of Anne Frank” gathered after classes at Central Valley High School one afternoon last week, but not to rehearse. They were listening to the experiences of Carla Peperzak, who lived near the Frank family and attended the same Jewish temple.

“Every day you were scared,” she said of her life in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. “You couldn’t relax. When you heard soldiers walking outside you were scared to death. You didn’t know if they were going to ring the bell. You lived literally by the day.”

Peperzak was born Jewish, but because her mother had been born Christian her father was able to get her an identification card without the J that would brand her as a Jew. “Because of that I did not have to wear a star,” she said, referring to the yellow star that all Jews were required to wear on their clothing.

Peperzak was the same age as Anne Frank’s older sister, Margot. “I knew (Anne’s) sister better than I knew her,” she said.

She told the students about making fake identification cards for relatives going into hiding, about the bombs that fell on the city and about the oppressive fear. “I saw people taken away,” she said. “You can’t do anything about it.” Friends and family members disappeared all the time and there was no way of knowing if they had been picked up by the Germans, gone into hiding or fled the country.

“You did not know if they were dead or not dead,” she said, her accent still clear despite her years living in the United States. “I lost quite a few of my relatives. Eighty percent never came back.”

She became emotional several times, including when she spoke about the joy that came with the end of the Nazi occupation. “It was like a big stone taken off your body,” she said.

The play the students will perform officially opens tonight at 7:30 p.m., but middle school students had previews of the performance earlier this week. The students also saw several exhibits on loan from the Washington State Holocaust Research Center, which will be on display outside the theater.

“We thought this was a prime opportunity to do some educating,” said parent volunteer Evan Sorensen, who arranged for the exhibits. “We always like to have some sort of educational piece with our shows.”

The exhibits include photos of concentration camps and pictures of artifacts that belonged to concentration camp survivors.

Theater director Mike Muzatko said one of the reasons he chose the play is because the book is on the eighth-grade reading list. “It is part of the eighth-grade curriculum and (the play) hasn’t been done in our district for as far as I can remember,” he said.

The play the students will be performing is a new version that includes sections of the diary that were released only in the last decade by Anne’s father, who had her diary published after her death in a concentration camp. The new details include more on her struggle with puberty and her deep relationship with Peter Van Daan, which often seemed more like a crush in earlier versions of the diary and play. “It was far beyond that,” Muzatko said. “It’s a much more well-rounded view.”

Even though Peperzak was supportive of the students’ efforts in putting on the play, she likely won’t be in the audience. “I saw the play and I had to walk out,” she said. “It was easier to read the book than see the play.”

If there is one thing she wanted to the students to remember it was to keep an open mind. “Try to understand other people,” she said. “Try not to hate. Hate is such a terrific, terrible thing.”