Holocaust survivor inspires Alabama student actors staging ‘Diary of Anne Frank’

Above: At the rehearsal of “Diary of Anne Frank’s play at John Carroll Catholic High School are, from left, drama teacher and director Joey Plaia, student and actress Marissa Latham who plays Anne Frank, and Holocaust survivor Max Herzel.
Holocaust survivor shares story with students staging “Diary of Anne Frank” from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
By the time Holocaust survivor Max Herzel reached the age of a typical high schooler, he had witnessed cruelty and bigotry no one should have to endure. But he had been blessed, too, with amazing kindness and care from strangers – despite the dangers faced by those who dared to help him and his family.
That dichotomy was an essential element of the message Herzel conveyed recently to young actors at Birmingham’s John Carroll Catholic High School. The students plan to take what they learned from Herzel to inform their upcoming presentation of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a play adapted from one of the most powerful, personal accounts about the dark days of Nazism.

Anne Frank (© AFF Basel / AFS Amsterdam)
“One of the reasons I go and speak about this is to make the public aware of the dangers out there – what can happen in this life,” Herzel told the audience of students, parents and teachers. “But there were also a lot of people who helped us.”
Herzel was born in 1930 in Antwerp, Belgium – just a few months after Anne Frank’s birth in Frankfurt, Germany. Like Frank, Herzel had one older sibling, a brother. Frank had an older sister. The Herzel and Frank children had something else in common: They were Jews, and their families would suffer because of it under Nazi anti-Semitism.
By the time World War II began in 1939, the Frank family had moved to Holland. The Herzels remained in Belgium. Both countries fell swiftly following the Nazi blitzkrieg, launched May 10, 1940. Herzel’s family spent seven anxious days and nights on a packed train to escape the Nazi invasion. They had little money and took none of their belongings – unaware they would never return.
For a time they found safety in Southern France, supported by relief agencies and others. But after France fell, they were resettled at an internment camp with other Jews, foreign nationals, political opponents and undesirables. There, the Herzel family was split up – with women and children forced to one side of the camp’s barbed wire dividing line and men detained on the other. They slept on straw mats. There was no running water. When fire destroyed the camp’s dilapidated kitchen, the Herzels and thousands of others were moved to Rivesalte, a former prison that was a pipeline to the Nazi concentration camps. Herzel’s father bribed guards to allow his family to escape to the Mediterranean coastal city of Marseilles.
“We looked like beggars,” Herzel recalled. “We had nothing. Our clothes were torn and dirty.”
Herzel said his family moved to smaller French communities, with support from local relief agencies. They were often harassed by anti-Semitic police, but Herzel remembers the kindness shown by a few sympathetic neighbors.
Herzel’s father and brother were ultimately arrested. Perhaps with the help of the local rabbi – Herzel doesn’t know for sure – the two were released. Herzel’s father fled to avoid another potentially fatal arrest, while Herzel’s brother joined the French resistance movement. Herzel’s mother, overwhelmed by years of trauma and deprivation, had an emotional breakdown following her husband’s arrest. She attempted suicide and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Barely an adolescent, the youngest Herzel was left alone and placed in a series of orphanages.
When asked by a John Carroll student what it was like to be a Jewish kid, on his own, during war, Herzel didn’t hesitate: “Panic – fear – you didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.”
Herzel’s mother would remain in the hospital for the remainder of the war. Herzel’s father made his way to Italy but was captured. He was sent to the infamous concentration camp Auschwitz, and later Buchenwald, where he died six weeks before Allied troops liberated the camp. Herzel would lose nearly a dozen family members to the Holocaust.
Joey Plaia, John Carroll’s drama teacher and director of the upcoming production, said Herzel’s visit with the cast was invaluable as the students prepare to stage one of the most challenging plays in the program’s history. “That Max and Anne Frank were contemporaries – teenagers going through some of the same experiences of anti-Semitism and isolation – made his visit with us especially powerful,” Plaia said.
“As young actors and actresses, it is difficult to create a believable performance of such an emotional and tragic story when you have no real life equivalent to compare it to,” Plaia added. “Hearing Max speak about these harsh realities really helped to paint a picture for these student actors to draw from and apply in their performances.”
While the Herzels strived to survive and stay together as a family in France, Anne Frank’s family was grimly contemplating its options in Amsterdam as more and more Jews were being rounded up across occupied Holland.
On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a red and white checked diary for her 13th birthday. Less than a month later, the family and three others went into hiding in sealed-off rooms in the annex of her father’s office building. They stayed there until August 1944, when they were betrayed and deported to Nazi concentration camps.
Only Anne’s father survived the war. But Anne’s diary and other writings were saved by two former employees of the family. The publication of Anne’s intensely personal account of her time in hiding became a global sensation and was later adapted into a play.
John Carroll is staging a new adaptation of the play, which includes recently discovered, additional writings by Frank, as well as Holocaust survivor accounts.

Ann Frank (© AFF Basel / AFS Amsterdam)
Marissa Latham, a John Carroll senior who portrays Anne Frank, said meeting Herzel and hearing his story was inspiring. “Because Mr. Herzel and Anne were so close in age, his story was very beneficial to me. It reminds me that Anne actually lived, and that the diary and this show are a way to tell her story.”
Herzel’s last stop before liberation was a remote village in the French Alps, where an underground Jewish organization placed him with a farm family. Posing as a Catholic orphan, Herzel worked for his food and lodging. When the Allies retook France in the summer of 1944, a new effort began – to reconnect Jewish children with their families, if they could be found.
Herzel and his brother, and later their mother, immigrated to the United States. Although his schooling had been erratic during the war, Herzel continued his education in the states, going to night school to learn English. He spent four years in the U.S. Air Force, earned a college degree through the G.I. Bill and had a distinguished career in the Veterans Administration before retiring as an executive with the VA Medical Center in Birmingham.
Herzel speaks often to children and adults as a volunteer with the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center – not only so that people never forget what happened more than 70 years ago, but because his experiences are relevant to the challenges humanity faces today.
The mass movement of refugees to Europe from war-torn Syria is a recent reminder that families and children across the globe still face fundamental questions of survival, Herzel said.
“People should be able to live,” he told the John Carroll students. “They should not be punished for just living.”
The Diary of Anne Frank will be performed Nov. 13-16 at John Carroll Catholic High School in Homewood. Tickets are available at the door and online at https://jcchs.webconnex.com/JCCHSTHEATRE