With not much more than thirty hours to spend in Amsterdam (and still eat, drink and sleep!), I was forced to make some tough decisions about what could and couldn't be done.
In the end I decided that I should visit the Anne Frank House, partly because it ws raining heavily and it was obvious that it was time to do some indoor activities and partly because I had visited Auschwitz earlier in the year and am very interested in this period of history.
Background ------------------
Anne Frank was born in Germany in 1929. In 1933, Otto Frank and his wife, Edith, decided to leave Germany with Anne and their older daughter, Margot, to make a new life in Amsterdam because, being Jewish, they feared that their lives would not be safe in Nazi Germany.
They lived happily in Amsterdam until the Germans invaded and occupied the Netherlands in 1940. At fisrt Jews were instructed to wear yellow star-shaped badges ti identify them as Jews; then they were forbidden from running businesses and holding certain types of jobs and finally they were rounded up and sent away to concentration camps in eastern Europe.
Initially they were told to preset themselves for this but many tried to avoid this and so troops were sent to houses known to be occupied by Jews and anyone found hiding was forcefully removed and put on the trains to almost certain death.
The Franks were one family who refused to give themselves up. They did not see why they should. They had already fled Germany and rebuilt their lives, they were not going to leave without a fight. They now had a nice house on the Prinsengracht with the offices and warehouses of the family business next door. The girls were doing well at school and Otto and Edith did not want the family to be separated.
The decision was made to go into hiding; the family would live in an annexe at the rear of 263 Prinsengracht. They were joined there a week later by Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter, a couple of years older than Anne. This was in May, in November Fritz Pfeffer also moved in.
The families were helped by the staff of the Frank family business. In particular the secretary, Miep Gies, risked her own safety to smuggle in food, medecines and other supplies including school work for the young people. This was done by the children and sent secretly for marking by a school teacher hiding elsewhere.
As soon as staff started arriving for work downstairs, everyone had to remain silent. The slightest noise might alert someone. The families lived like this for twenty-five months until their hiding place was betrayed in August 1944.
The Museum --------------------
The Anne Frank House is situated in central Amsterdam on the Prinsengracht, just a stone's throw from the Westerkerk (west church). We walked there - it's only twenty minutes from the central station - but it can be reached by taking trams number 13 or 17.
You enter through the recently built modern visitors centre and as you go in there is a leaflet available in eight languages which will give you extra information as you go round. There is a designated route to take - not because the Dutch are stuffy, rules-happy people but because this is a traditional Dutch townhouse and therefore very narrow with steep staircases and therefore not practical for lots of people to wander at random.
Unfortunately, this also means that these premises are not suitable for wheelchair users or people with limited mobilty. I think this is a shame but really unavoidable without drastically altering the building and then, of course, it would not accurately show what the families went through.
I am not going to describe in minute detail everything there is to see in the Anne Frank House - I think this would spoil the experience for anyone visiting the museum. What I will do is briefly describe the main rooms and how the story is told.
The rooms are now devoid of furniture and therefore look very sombre and sad. Information panels on the wall in each room say (in a couple of languages) who lived in the room and give a quote relating to those people from Anne's diary.
Some of the rooms also contain display cabinets exhibiting items such as a yellow badge worn as identification by a Jewish person or papers instructing Jewish people that they must surrender themself for deportation. One very poignant exhibit is the first, tartan bound diary Anne kept while in the house.
Aftr the first couple of rooms, you passage throughthe low and narrow doorway past the bookcase which hid the secret entrance to the annexe. My heart began to beat harder and faster at this point - it really struck a chord that Anne herself had once gone through this doorway.
Upstairs are more rooms with exhibits and a few have large TV screens and show interviews with Otto Frank and Miep Gies and also newsreel footage showing events at the time that the Netherlands was occupied. These are either recorded in English or subtitled. They really add to the experience and enhance your knowledge but they also slow down the passage of visitors throught the house. This is because only a limited number of peple can properly see the screen at one time so the next people wait in the corridor and then the whole thing grinds to a halt.
This, though, is only to be expected in such a busy place but you should leave enough time to do the museum justice taking into acount these delays.
As you complete the tour of the house,you are led back to the visitors centre where there are lots of computers offering interactive learning and opportunities to learn more about Anne Frank, the persecution of the Jesw and the work done by the Anne Frank House (a registered charity) to keep her memeory alive and to educate pboth adults and children and promote the concepts of freedom and democracy.
There is also a comprehensive bookshop which stocks relevent books in many languages.
Entry to the museum costs 7 Euros 50 for adults and 3 Euros 50 for 10 to 17 year olds. Children 9 years and under go free. There is no discount for holders of the Amsterdam Museumcaart.
The museum is open from 9.00am until 7.00pm in the winter and until 9.00pm in the summer (April onwards). It is closed for Yom Kippur on 25th September 2004.
Epilogue -------------
Anne Frank died of typhus and deprivation in MArch 1945 in Bergen-Belsen, a couple of days after her sister. Edith Frank died in Auschwutz-Birkenau of disease and exhaustion in January 1945. Only Otto Frank survived. Miep Gies gave him Anne's diary which was first published in 1947 as"The Secret Annexe".
The "Diary of a Young Girl" has been translated into over 60 languages and is widely available from bookshops.
Today - 26th January - is Holocaust Memorial Day.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Loved reading this, exceptional, exquisite and wonderfully written...this was already the #1 place I was going to visit while in Amsterdam...have you seen the documentary "Anne Frank Remembered," narrated by Kenneth Branagh? It won an Oscar in 1995 for Best Documentary, and the director and Miep Gies went on stage to accept the award...Superb film, you should see it...Chris xxxx
Kirsty1 11.03.2004 11:19
I've been a couple of times and find it a really harrowing experience - even with all the tourists they manage to cram in there it somehow still retains it's dignity doesn't it? Kirstyxx
Harryslarry 27.02.2004 13:21
Brill description fiona.I remember thinking , what it must have felt like to be hiden away in the back of that house.
I think it is a must to see and experience.
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Jan 27th, 2004
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