In Honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) - A Visit to the Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, April 2017
(Note: portions of this post include specific descriptions of the home and references to the book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. If you have not read the book, it is highly recommended for any readers 13+ - the subject matter may not be appropriate for younger children.)
Any guidebook will tell you that one of the highlight destinations of a visit to Amsterdam (along with the canals, the Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh Museum) is the Anne Frank House. And I agree. To be honest, part of me, despite teenage visits to the museums and memorials at the concentration camps of Poland, finds the idea of all Holocaust museums a little exploitative. On the other hand, I’m a huge believer in the quote, “Those who forget history are bound to repeat it.” This is our history, like it or not, and we need to remember. And this is a beautiful and fascinating museum, highly worth the visit.
Reservations for entrance to the Anne Frank House open two months in advance of any date. If you know your dates for a visit and want to expedite your trip, I highly recommend reserving as early as you can. Reservations can fill up quickly, and my dates were completely booked a week and a half before my visit when I finally tried for an appointment.
Since I didn't make a reservation in advance I had to wait in line (in the cold) for 2 1/2 hours. The line was all the way around the block and most of the way around Westermarkt square. Surprisingly, it was kind of nice having to wait, because it meant that so many other people cared enough about Anne and her story that they were all willing to wait too. And the people were from all over the world. Behind me in line was a family from Delhi, in front of me a large group of teenagers and chaperones from Germany. Anne’s diary has been translated into more than 60 languages, and that was evident from the visitors.
(Note: One of the first things I learned was that some of the names were changed in the diary for publication. The "Van Daans" were actually the Van Pels family, and "Mr. Dussel" was really named Fritz Pfeffer.)
The museum and house were fascinating. Unfortunately, they don't allow photography, so I have no interior photos, only memories to help me describe the space.
Despite the fact that it was actually an office and warehouse building for Mr. Frank’s spice import company, the whole building is really small. Buildings in Amsterdam are extremely narrow, not like the office buildings and warehouses I'm used to in the US. I would guess that the whole building interior isn’t much wider than my living room, though obviously I might be underestimating.
The Secret Annex, on the other hand, was bigger than I expected, though still very small when you think about 8 people living there and trying not to make noise. Each floor (there were two, plus an attic storage space) was the same width as the building, and a similar depth to the width.
The lower floor was the Frank family bedrooms and the bathroom, and the upper floor was the living room/dining room/kitchen/Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels room and Peter's room. When reading the book, I had always wondered why Mr. Dussel/Fritz Pfeffer shared a room with Anne and not with Peter, but I understood when I saw Peter's room. He had a big wooden staircase/ladder up to the attic in the middle of his room, so there really wasn't room for an extra person. There is no furniture in the rooms now, but you can imagine how tight everything was. All that is left is a few artifacts: the board game Peter got for his birthday, the movie star pictures glued to Anne’s wall, and the height chart for Anne and Margot that their mother penciled on the wall.
Outside of the annex space and in the adjacent building the Anne Frank Foundation (annefrank.org) has created an incredible museum. They have Anne’s actual diaries on display, as well as some of Anne's other writing. It was really special to see everything written in her own handwriting and picture (though I couldn't read anything, as she wrote in Dutch). Anne aspired to be a writer, and it’s obvious from her output.
The museum also has amazing videos of Otto Frank (Anne’s father, the only survivor of the annex), Miep Gies (one of the helpers who kept them alive and safe), and one of Anne’s childhood friends who met up with her in the concentration camp talking about their experiences. There is also a short film with people all over the world talking about the impact Anne’s story and visiting the museum has had on them. And each visitor is given the chance to give their own impressions, through on site computer kiosks (not working when I was there), the Anne Frank Foundation website, or the on site handwritten guest book. I left my own note there.
(Several years ago there was controversy when Justin Bieber, after a visit, wrote that he thought Anne would have been a “Belieber.” It was not the most sensitive comment, but the truth is, she probably would have been.)
In the museum, I was struck by a dilemma faced by many. In a thick volume filled with the names of Dutch victims of the Holocaust, they keep the book open to Anne’s name. Below her name are six listings for Aron Frank, as well as thousands of other names. Approximately 100,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands and died in the Holocaust. This museum focuses on only eight people, and primarily on the youngest of the eight. In a way, I wondered if this was fair.
And yet, Anne Frank did something special. She put a face on the victims of the Holocaust. An innocent face, with the stories to tell us that she was just a regular girl, not so different from any other teenage girl. Sometimes the numbers of victims are overwhelming and a single person can help us fathom the unfathomable. Sometimes one girl can tell us her story, and it will be remembered for a long time to come.
As a secondary note about European victims of the Holocaust, a German artist named Guenther Demnig has created a project he calls “Stumbling Blocks.” Around Europe he has placed bronze stones outside of homes where Jews lived prior to the Holocaust. They list the names and fates of the inhabitants of that home. There has been controversy over the project, with current inhabitants protesting the memorials, but I think it’s a fascinating project. In my wandering around Amsterdam, I found two stumbling block sites. You can read more about the project here.
