Dear Anne

Last night, Doug and I attended a lecture and tour of the Anne Frank House, our first visit to the museum since arriving in Amsterdam.

The house is on the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) in the Jordaan, a very popular, trendy neighborhood in the centre of Amsterdam.  You can see the house below in blue.

To escape the Nazis, Anne Frank and seven other Jewish people (including her mother, father and sister) spent twenty-five months hiding in a small section at the back of the house, which Anne called the "Secret Annex."

"Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I'm terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we'll be shot."  Anne Frank

The group did not go outside for two years, and could only see glimpses of the sky, the chestnut tree in the back garden, and Westerkerk (church in foreground) from a tiny window in the attic.  All other windows were blacked out.

Anne writes of listening to the church bells sound--one of the few noises of outside life that they could hear from inside the annex.

Here's a photo of Anne with her mother, Edith, and sister, Margot.

The family fled Germany for the Netherlands in 1930, recognizing the threat of the Nazis.  For seven years, the family led a very normal life; Father Otto starting a business, and the two sisters attending school.

The Germans invaded Holland in May of 1940, first bombing and destroying Rotterdam.  With Amsterdam under threat, the Dutch government surrendered to the Germans within five days.

The Frank family went into hiding on July 5, 1942, after receiving a letter demanding the deportation of Anne's sister, Margot, to a labor camp in Germany.

The group of seven were helped while in hiding by four office workers in the building who brought food and other necessities.

During the day, no one could walk around or use the toilet for fear of causing the floor boards to creak, alerting the warehouse workers below to their existence.  Neighbors thought the Frank family had fled to Switzerland where they had family.

On August 4, an anonymous person betrayed the family, and all seven, plus two helpers, were arrested.  They were ultimately sent on to Auschwitz.  Only Otto Frank, Anne's father, survived.  Anne, her sister and mother all died within a few weeks of the liberation of Auschwitz.

During their two years of hiding, Anne and her sister both kept diaries.

German authorities confiscated everything in the secret annex, but two of the helpers, who had survived the arrest, later searched the area and found Anne's diary.  Margot's was never found.

The diary was first published in 1947 under the direction of Otto, who wanted to fulfill Anne's wishes that the diary be published after the war.  She dreamed of becoming a writer or a journalist.

One reviewer wrote this:

"To me, however, this apparently inconsequential diary by a child... stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together."

On a personal note, when I was nine years old, my Nana took me to the bookstore and said I could pick out five books and that she would buy them for me.  I trotted up to her with a selection that she deemed too old for a girl my age (I'm sure this meant I had an armful of Judy Bloom books), and she sent me back to the stacks.  I returned with some other choices, one of which was Anne Frank's Diary.  My Nana shook her head no, I persisted, and she relented.  I read the book in a day and then approached my Nana with a million questions.  She still speaks vividly of her struggle to explain the Holocaust to me in terms that could educate but not frighten.

I don't remember what questions I asked.  I do know that I did not understand the tragedy of these events in that moment; this didn't happen until I was much older. However, I very much recall identifying with Anne, a girl just a few years older than me, who also liked to write and throughout her diary talked of many things I could really relate to.

The experience of millions of people during the war is lost forever, only their names listed in a book in memoriam.  Certainly, this is why Anne's diary resonates so deeply worldwide.  She offers us glimpses into the terror, the tragedy, the unfathomable; but she also reveals the humanity and courage in the face of it.  In 1940, there were 135,000 Jewish people in the Netherlands.  By the end of the war, 100,000 had died.

I am reminded of all of this during the holiday season, especially Hanukkah.

On a final note, I find myself haunted by the fate of those who survive these kind of tragedies.

A few months ago, Doug and I watched "Sophie's Choice," a fictional account of a mother who survives the Holocaust, but whose children and other family are killed.  I had not read the book, and this was my first time seeing the movie.  While the mother is fictional, and also a non-Jewish person persecuted in a concentration camp, the story still shows the profound guilt and impossible task of continuing on that survivors experience.  I simply cannot shake the sickening I feel when thinking about the "choice" this mother made.

And I am equally as haunted by this photo of Otto, standing in the secret annex after the war.

Otto died in 1980 at the age of ninety-one.  He eventually got remarried to another survivor and migrated to Switzerland.

In an interview that we were able to view at the museum, he said that he was on very tender and wonderful terms with his daughter, Anne; but even he was surprised to read her diary and become aware of her seriousness, her depth of feeling and understanding.

In the end, he said in the interview, he didn't think one could ever really know their children.