

The founder of the Anne Frank Trust and author of The Legacy of Anne Frank, Gillan Walnes Perry, talks about the incredible legacy left by Anne and her famous diary, written when hiding from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam. Gillian’s travelled all over the world spreading Anne’s message to help combat prejudice, was once chased by the KGB for her human rights work in Russia and now has the cushiest job in the world giving lectures on luxury cruise ship across the globe.
On this episode we cover:
How she founded the Anne Frank Trust
Human Rights Campaign changing under Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia
The Rabbi’s father who was friends with Otto Frank
The first Anne Frank exhibition in Bournemouth
Persuading the Anne Frank House to support the initiative
Taking Anne Frank into schools, prisons and challenged communities
Training young people and prisoners to be exhibition guides
Encouraging young people with responsibility
Using Anne Franks message to combat prejudice
Taking Holocaust survivors into prisons
Anne Frank Day in June
National campaigns against bullying
How Anne developed a moral code in hiding
A glimpse into the heart of a teenage girl under persecution
The personalisation of war and genocide with Anne’s family
Anne’s German roots in Frankfurt
How Otto Frank was 7th generation German Jewish
Otto Frank’s photography
The rise of the far-right
Anne’s legacy in Amsterdam
The Dutch Resistance Museum
How Anne took comfort from the chimes from The Westerkirk Church
Anne’s first home in Amsterdam in the Merwedeplein
The still there bookshop where Anne’s diary was bought for her birthday
Anne being a flirt and writing about boys and her classmates
How the Merwedeplein apartment is now a refuge for writers seeking asylum
Visitign Russia to help Jewish people leave the Soviet Union
Being chased by the KGB in Vilnius and Lithuania
Being refused entry to Russia in 1990 due to being a persona non grata
Returning to St Petersberg in 2018
Watching England play Belgium in the FIFA World Cup
How Soviet hotels had a KGB office on every floor
Being followed around the streets
How cruises ‘let you unpack once and be taken everywhere’
Auditioning for P&O ferries
Lecturing on cruise ships – Honolulu to San Francisco
Working with President Obama’s sister in – Maya Kasandra Soetoro-Ng in Hawaii
Lectures on cruise ships – afternoon tea and European royalty
Boris Johnson’s Who Do You Think You Are
Gillian’s book about Anne Frank’s legacy
How Anne’s legacy has influenced people in post communist Europe, post apartheid South Africa, post dictatorship Argentina and Chile and post civil war in Sri Lanka and the inequalities of the caste system in India
Miep Gies and Otto Frank’s office workers who helped hide the family
How Otto Frank got the diary after he had survived the concentration camps
Port Elizabeth with Govan Mbeki
‘The Robin Island University’
Nelson Mandela’s reading of Anne Frank in Robin Island Prison
Nelson Mandela signing the Anne Frank declaration – written by Gillian on her sofa
Travelling with the UK with the Anne Frank Exhibition
Meeting the midwife who had met Anne in Amsterdam
Anne’s best friend Hanne who she met again in Bergen Belsen
Throwing the bicycles of Nazi officers into the canals at night
The social history of afternoon tea
Duchess of Bedford in 1880 in Woburn Abbey
Introducing afternoon tea to Queen Victoria’s court
How afternoon tea encouraged affairs
How tea rooms helped emancipate women
1950s Tupperware parties and Avon
The revival of afternoon tea
5000 years of tea drinking from China to tea dances
The history of the European Royal Families
How Queen Victoria spread tentacles all over Europe
The interrelated royal families
The Danish royal family relating back to Vikings
The Norwegian Royal family at Oslo Cathedral
Travelling the world giving lectures on cruise ships
How Joanna Lumley inspired a trip to Norway in search of the Northern Lights