Fifth-graders, from left, Max Cisse, Ben Kane and Nico Wheeler look at a cardboard model of the annex where Anne Frank lived in hiding at Haine Middle School on Wednesday in Cranberry Township. For the Anne Frank Gallery Walk project, groups of sixth-graders made displays depicting what they learned about the World War II diarist and Holocaust victim. Joseph Ressler/Butler Eagle 6/1/22

CRANBERRY TWP — Three teachers at Haine Middle School in the Seneca Valley School District created a multifaceted project on Holocaust victim Anne Frank for the sixth-grade students in their homerooms, and the lessons of the young Jewish girl’s short life apparently hit home.

“I learned you should be grateful for what you have,” said sixth-grader Ella Barch.

“I learned you shouldn’t judge others on something they can’t change about themselves, and it’s not a cause for hatred if someone is different from you,” said her classmate Leah Malley.

For the project, students broke into groups and read novels about World War II and the Holocaust, watched a video about Anne Frank, took a virtual field trip to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, studied quotes from her famous diary, created posters with Frank’s quotes and their interpretation of them, and completed nine models of the small annex the Frank family hid inside during the Nazi occupation of Europe before being captured by the SS.

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