Last night, I went to a presentation the Denver Public Library arranged about a play about Anne's time in hiding. The presentation included a talk by a Holocaust survivor who had been hidden as a child, when much younger than Anne had been.
    Eric Cahn's life was somewhat similar to Anne's: he was born in Germany, had to learn different languages as a young child, and was hidden from the Nazis for two years. But his life was much different: obviously, he survived. The place he was hidden in was never raided, but he had to stay quiet in a room in a basement from the ages of four to six (he was born nine years after Anne).
    At two years old, he had been shipped to a camp in France, with his parents and infant sister. There was hardly any food. After two years there, he was spirited away by French Resistance members. (His parents agreed to this; his sister was likewise saved, but in a different location.) Cahn later learned that his parents had been shipped to Auschwitz less than one month later and he would have been with them.
    What he told us of his story after that was likewise complicated, but he wrote a book about it. I doubt if it is a what-it-was-like personal narrative, since his talk didn't go into that. He is cool-headed, was a business owner, is not warm-hearted like Anne. (Two past news stories tell more about his story: college paper, opening part of this article.) He is involved with the Mizel Museum, which helped create a good exhibit that comes with seeing the play that I mentioned.
    That play is the Denver Center Theatre Company's performance of The Diary of Anne Frank. It's an adaptation, by Wendy Kesselman, of the Goodrich/Hackett play of the same name. Unfortunately, Kesselman kept the fiction of Mr. van Daan stealing bread. They told us the adaptation emphasizes Anne's multi-faceted nature and doesn't play down the fact that they were Jewish.
    It's theatre-in-the-round: the seating surrounds the stage. We didn't see the stage or the play, but they showed us a model of the staging: the entire secret annex is on one level and they will use lighting to create different effects. It looked exceptionally well planned.
    Just outside the stage doors (below the entrance level) is an exhibit summarizing the stories of about a dozen child survivors of the Holocaust. One of the survivors was in our group, in addition to Eric. I assume all of the people whose stories were summarized were residents of Denver at some point. It was affecting to hear someone quietly choke out, "I knew her," about a woman who, as a small child, had been smuggled out of a ghetto in a potato sack to save her life.
    The play (and accompanying exhibit) runs for five weeks—from Nov 9 to Dec 15—at the Space Theatre, in downtown Denver. Depending on the time and seat, prices appear to be $25-35 for adults. All of the seats should be good because it is a small theatre.

Related:

• Denver residents (or maybe it's Colorado residents) can stand in line on Nov 8th for first-come, first-served single free tickets for that night's show (6:30), courtesy of the Denver Scientific & Cultural Facilities District.
• The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has an exhibit, Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust, including an extensive online portion.

Later Note:
Denver Post article (They list the prices as higher than what I got by going to the actual site. Presumably they added this mandatory $5 charge and an optional mail charge? Also, I guess the cast had a slightly different impression of Cahn than I did.)