A Visit to Anne Frank's House

Before visiting Paris, we visited Amsterdam (in the Netherlands, or Holland). While there I was determined to visit Anne Frank's hideout, the building in which she and her family lived while hiding out from the Nazis in the 1940's.

We arrived at the building a half an hour before closing time, but paid the entrance price anyway. I figured a brief glimpse would be better than nothing, as I do not know when or if I will return to Amsterdam.

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The building is devoid of all furniture, which was carted away by the Nazis after the Franks were arrested. The building is a four story affair where a Dutch businessman hid the Franks and another family, the van Pels, for two years during the Nazi pogroms of World War II. The upper floors of the building were allegedly closed off and unused due to the war. In actuality, the upper floors housed the Franks and the van Pels.

We walked down a hall to where a bookcase stood ajar from the wall. Behind the bookcase was a well worn door leading to the living quarters. The bookcase had been used to hide the door.

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The living quarters were quite small. There were four bedrooms, one for Peter, the son of the van Pels, one for Peter's mother and father, another for Anne's parents, Otto and Edith Frank, and finally, one for Anne Frank and her sister Margot. For all, there was a single toilet with no bath or shower, and a kitchen where meals were prepared and eaten.

I saw all of these rooms in the deepening gloom of late day, including the room belonging to Anne and Margot. Anne Frank had cut pictures of people and scenes from magazines and had pasted them with tape onto the walls of her bedroom. The pictures are still there, now covered with large sheets of glass or plastic to preserve them. Anne was in that room for two years; I was there for a minute or less.

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Anne Frank was a pretty, intelligent young girl, who was taken to Bergen-Belsen, a slave labor camp, where Anne and her sister Margot died from disease. Her father Otto was the only family member to survive. After the war someone found Anne's diary still in the building and gave it to Otto. The diary was later published as a book and has been widely read and translated from the Dutch to many other languages.

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I read Anne's diary, published as Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl, in high school. I have read it at least twice more since then. I was always moved by it and could identify with Anne, having kept journals myself since I was 10 years old.

The picture at the top right is a picture of the building hiding-place (it is the second building from the right, with the white flagpole). The other pictures include Anne Frank's bedroom with the pictures she affixed to the walls; the kitchen; and the toilet where Peter van Pel often hid out from Anne. I took all of these photos.

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It was a sobering experience to stand in these same spaces where Anne Frank lived and wrote over sixty years ago. She has always been an inspiration to me.

This is Anne Frank

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