Dozens of Hart district junior high students and their parents listened to a real-life lesson plan that accompanied their reading of “The Diary of Anne Frank” on Monday.

Holocaust survivor Edith Frankie, 82, visited Rio Norte Junior High to speak with a class of eighth-graders Monday. “I’m happy because it was was an experience I could enrich my students with,” said Vickie Kaplan, an eighth-grade teacher. “It is something that they can learn from for their future.”

Frankie endured similar hardships as Frank, as they were both in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, which was located in the northwestern region of Germany. About 160 students and parents listened to her as she explained what she went through in 1940  as a 14-year-old teenager during World War II, and the what she experienced.

When asked by a student if she hated Germans or held anything against them, Frankie said, “No,  because everyone has a purpose here, and it’s life.”

Another student asked what was the first thing she did upon leaving the concentration camp and Frankie said “she took a shower.”

 The William S. Hart Union High School District oversees about 23,000 junior high and high school students in the Santa Clarita Valley.  

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