Left to right, Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, and Doyle Stevick, director of the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina, speak during a gathering of the museum's international directors in Columbia Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — International leaders dedicated to educating students against discrimination and carrying on the legacy of a Jewish teenage girl whose diary has become one of the most iconic stories of the Holocaust all gathered this week at the University of South Carolina.
The multi-day meeting, which started Monday, marked the group’s first time in Columbia since the campus became home to the world’s fourth Anne Frank Center.
The USC center opened in September 2021 as the North American partner to the Anne Frank House in the Netherlands. It joined locations in Berlin, Buenos Aires and London in spreading worldwide the mission of the house where the Franks hid in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II.
The Anne Frank House, which opened as a museum in May 1960, preserves the hiding place, stands as a monument to the dangers of antisemitism and cautions against all forms of persecution and discrimination that continues to this day.
The gathering in South Carolina of leaders from the Amsterdam house and four centers comes nearly two months after the deadly antisemitic shooting, perpetrated by a father and son, during a Hanukkah celebration on a popular Australian beach. It’s also been more than two years since Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, taking some 250 hostages and killing about 1,200 civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. The resulting war has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. A U.S.-negotiated ceasefire in October hasn’t stopped the fighting.
USC’s Anne Frank Center addressing antisemitism in shadow of Israel-Hamas war
“With ever fewer (Holocaust) survivors in our communities, and with antisemitism and other forms of group-related hatred rising around us, I think we feel that our responsibility has never been greater,” said Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House.
“Through (Anne’s) story, we look at what antisemitism looks like today and what all forms of prejudice look like today,” Leopold added. “Not just trying to confront antisemitism but all the ills in our society.”
Stepping into the Anne Frank Center, visitors see a replica of the bookshelf that concealed the entryway to the Frank family’s annex and the desk where Anne Frank recorded her innermost thoughts.
The Franks hid in the attic of the house for more than two years before they were discovered and sent to concentration camps in 1944, where all but Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, died.
Anne received her diary in June 1942 for her 13th birthday and used it to record both the daily struggles and fears of being in hiding, as well as her coming of age and maturing thoughts on humanity. Her diary later became the internationally acclaimed book “The Diary of a Young Girl” and a staple on school reading lists.
As Leopold nears retirement from his position overseeing the Amsterdam house, the USC center wanted to honor him at its own annual awards ceremony.
“We would not be here without Ronald Leopold. It simply could not have happened,” said Doyle Stevick, the USC center’s director.
Leopold called the opening of the USC center the highest achievement of his more than 15-year career.
“It was very important for us to be in an environment where many young people, who are our future, are here to carry Anne’s words forward into that future. And that was actually her father’s dream,” he said.
Since the center’s opening, more than 15,000 USC students have taken part in the 75-minute tour and talk, which covers the Holocaust as well as instances of hate that happened closer to home.
For example, presenters discuss the self-avowed white supremacist who in 2015 gunned down nine Black parishioners following a Bible study at historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Discussions delve into how the 21-year-old killer came to his racist ideology and its ties to Nazism.
“They were looking for substance, not status,” Stevick said of the choice to house the center at USC. “It could have been the Anne Frank Center in Beverly Hills. But it’s the Anne Frank Center here at the University of South Carolina, and we’ve tried to honor the fact that (Leopold) had that trust in us,” Stevick said.
USC is recognizing Leopold alongside teachers and middle, high school and college students who have taken part in traveling exhibits put on by the center.
The Anne Frank House operates under the premise that all young people understand the negative power of peer pressure, but few recognize the flip side — their potential to bring out the best in one another. That’s why it created traveling exhibits and trained students to present them to classmates at middle schools and high schools nationwide, Stevick said.
The USC center started with one such exhibit in 2013. Today it has 20 exhibits circulating and Stevick just placed an order for 12 more as he chases the goal of having one exhibit on display in every state at any given time.
“I think (the Anne Frank House’s) magic was they understood better than most organizations the power of young people’s voices,” Stevick said. “It was the voice of a 13-year-old girl that circled the world and influenced millions, but lots of young people have unrealized potential. And who influences young people the most? Other young people.”
Among the students honored Monday are Ethan and Liam Shure, brothers who pushed to bring one of the travelling exhibits to Spring Valley High School in Columbia. Eleanor Streisfeld, a sixth grader at Crayton Middle School in Columbia, and Chloe McKenzie, a sophomore at Columbia’s WJ Keenan High School, received awards for their artwork.
A teacher, Heather Brougham-Cook, was named educator of the year by the center for her lessons on Anne Frank and the Holocaust at Cross Schools in Bluffton.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
