The Anne Frank House Museum
Written: Jun 19 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Moving,a warning for future generations
Cons: none
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| RobinLynn's Full Review: Amsterdam |
One of the most moving experiences I have had while travelling was a visit to the Anne Frank House and Museum, at 263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam. I had read the book and seen the movie on numerous occasions, but nothing prepared me for the emotional impact of seeing the secret annex in person.
This canal-side house is where eight Jewish people lived in hiding from the Nazis for twenty-five months. It consisted of two sections, the front, which housed Otto Franks' business, and contained a warehouse on the ground floor and offices and storerooms upstairs. These poor people lived in hiding in the back of the house, called the Secret Annex. They could not speak or make a sound the entire day, while people were working
during business hours downstairs.
The original stairway, bookcase, which hid the entrance to the annex, and much of the original personal items of Anne, her sister Margot, Otto and Edith Frank, Hermann and Auguste van Lels, and their son, Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer, are still intact. The room which Anne shared with Fritz Pfeffer, still has many of the original photographs of celebrities of the times, who Anne admired, and which she taped to the wall to try to decorate the tiny room. Pictures of Deanna Durbin, Ray Milland and a very young Princess Elizabeth of England are a poignant reminder of how alike most teenagers really are.
The hiding place was betrayed on August 4, 1944, probably by a burglar trying to rob the business in the evening, and hearing noises upstairs. They were all deported to extermination camps, either in Poland or Germany. Anne and her sister Margot, both succumbed to typhus just weeks before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. . Only Otto Frank survived the war.
Included in the annex are Edith Frank's prayer book, Margot's correspondence course work, a map of Normandy, where Otto Frank kept track of the Allied invasion, and of course the diary. It was not just one book, but many, including notebooks of over three hundred loose pages as well. Anne had rewritten and edited her original diary into a "novel about the secret Annex". She had hoped to someday publish it. How could she possibly know the impact her thoughts and words were to have on generations after her death!
There is also a display downstairs showing the horrors of Nazism, as well as displays of modern day fascist and ultra-nationalist propaganda with a plea to never let history repeat itself.
Recommended:
Yes
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RobinLynn
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Location: Parkland, Florida
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My loves are my wonderful family, our amazing grandsons, and travel.
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