Anne Frank House
If anyone watches Keeping Up with the Kardashians, (you shouldn't, but I know some of you do!) you know they do a "peaks and pits" after every vacation-- every person takes a turn saying their high/low of the vacation. Jackie, Jeff, and I did our peaks and pits of Amsterdam, and while there were many peaks, all of us agreed that the Anne Frank House was most interesting/memorable/moving/thought-provoking place in Amsterdam. Even Jeff, who HATES history and barely knew anything about Anne Frank's story, was fascinated. **Again, a disclaimer: we weren't allowed to take photos inside the museum. But I bought a wonderful book that I can't wait to bring home and put in my class library! It's full of photos and interesting information!
The museum is a tour through the building where Anne Frank, and 7 others, hid and wrote in her diary during World War II. All around the museum are quotes from her diary, photographs, films, and original objects from her time in the secret annex. We walked through multiple rooms of the building: the warehouse, the offices, the storeroom, the landing with the moveable bookcase used to conceal the entrance to their rooms, and the actual hiding place (her parents' room, her room, bathroom, kitchen/living room/Van Pels' room, Peter's room).
I don't even know where to begin to explain my emotions and thoughts as I walked through the museum. And since I'm not sure how familiar or unfamiliar you are with her story, I'll focus on the things that surprised me or made me think. *I HIGHLY encourage you to read her book-- some of you may be reading it for a class as you get older. Email me if you need help with any report or want extra information!
1. I didn't realize, or had forgotten, that there were 8 people in hiding. Anne's family (mom, dad- Otto, sister-Margot, Anne), plus another family (Van Pels-- Mr. & Mrs. Van Pel and their son, Peter), and an individual (Fritz Pfeffer, a family friend and dentist).
2. The building itself-- I didn't remember that it was Otto Frank's business building (his companies made jam and spice mixes for meat), that the building was still used for business during the time they were hiding (which is why they had to be completely quiet during daytime/work hours-- no talking, no walking around, no using the bathroom), that some of the employees helped hide them, or that the annex was actually 2 floors at the top of the building!
2a. How can a Nazi soldier looking for Jews not realize that there are 2 unaccounted for floors at the top of an office building? Especially when looking at it from the street?
2b. In my head, the annex was one room... the 2 floors were separated into rooms. Seeing it in person, they had more room than I realized; but I still couldn't BEGIN to imagine being confined to those 2 floors for 2 years without ever going outside. The could only see sunlight through a window in the very top space of the building (the attic).
2c. The rooms were empty, on Otto Frank's orders. He wanted them to remain like they were after the Nazis raided/emptied them. He had scale models made so that we could see what it looked like when they were hiding--furnished-- and had those photographs up around the rooms. In Anne's room, her posters of movie stars are still on the walls.
3. The 8 of them were betrayed by someone, and that person's identity is still unknown! After all the publicity surrounding her diary, so many years later, and we still don't know who told the Nazis they were hiding there. I figured someone by now would have made a deathbed confession or something, but no...
4. The 8 inhabitants were sent to concentration camps, and only Otto survived. Anne knew her mom died in Jan. 1944, her sister died in March 1944, and less than a month later, she died...one month before her camp was liberated!!! If only she had hung-on for one more month, she would have been freed and possibly reunited with her father. One of the short videos in the museum said she probably just gave up and stopped fighting to survive, thinking she was alone in life. She officially died of typhus.
5. There's a photo of Otto, in the annex, hours before it opens as a museum. It is the saddest photo ever. He worked so hard to have Anne's diary published, almost immediately after he was liberated and returned to Amsterdam (1947) and learned that his family and friends had all died. The house officially became a museum in 1960... I couldn't imagine being back in a place where he had spent 2 years in hiding, only to be caught, taken to a concentration camp, and now returning as the sole survivor. If it were me, I feel like I would want to be as far away from that place and those memories as possible.
6. The Diary: it survived! Even as she was writing it, Anne had heard on the radio that Jews were encouraged to keep diaries to tell their stories during this time. She rewrote pages and her short stories, fully intending to make a novel out of her writings. It's been translated into countless languages; it's the most translated Dutch book. They even have a graphic novel version of the book (I bought this book too for our class library).
7. The Franks and Van Pels tried for years- before they went into hiding- to get papers to legally move to other countries (USA, Cuba among them). In fact, they had already left Germany to go to Amsterdam, thinking it would remain neutral like in WWI. They had a copy of a letter from the USA that said they were wait-listed to enter the country. The expected wait time: "indefinite." While they were on the wait list, they couldn't move out of Amsterdam, or they'd have to start the process all over again. The USA accepted the most Jews of any other country, but even then, so many were denied... I know America doesn't have the resources to support every person who wants to wants to move here (back then or even now), but it's still sad to know that so many families like Anne's had no place to go and were trapped in Europe, just waiting to be found/sent to "labor" camps like Auschwitz & sentenced to die.
Literally every quote, every short video, photograph, etc., taught me something. I wanted to buy everything in the bookshop and bring it back to my class.
I'll just leave you with this quote from her diary, so wise at age 15:
One day this terrible war will be over.
The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews!
We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever,
we will always be Jews as well.
But then, we'll want to be.
Anne Frank, 11 April 1944
