One of the highlights of visiting Amsterdam was touring the house that the Frank family used to hide from the Nazis. Their concealment lasted two years from 1942 – 1944. Anne’s story is known almost everywhere in the World,, due to her written diary which illustrated her family’s hiding and account of their struggle to evade the Germans. They almost succeeded… but, after their capture, Anne’s diaries were found by their Dutch accomplices, strewn around the floors of their hiding place. After the war, Anne’s father was the only survivor of the concentration camps. He knew of his daughter’s ambition to be a journalist and arranged for the diary to be published.
In the 1960s a developer wanted to tear down the house, but wisely, a foundation was established to buy the House and two adjacent ones to allow visitors to tour the hiding area. The exhibit has become an extremely popular Amsterdam attraction and sells out almost all of its allotted tickets. Mrs Bear spearheaded our visit, and bought tickets on-line when they first became available (six weeks in advance). If we had waited until our visit to Amsterdam, we would have been shut out. We were given a 30 minute window to get into line and followed the people ahead of us as we slowly ascended the steep steps into the attic hiding area. There were narrations and displays to read along the way, but no furniture… the Nazis had removed almost everything after finding the family, and Mr Frank wanted to keep the rooms in that condition. I was also not allowed to take photos.
The models and drawings gave a good accounting of the physical and emotional struggles. And the Frank’s story is so well known that it was easy to identify their plight. The slowest part of the tour was viewing selected pages from Anne’s writings.
Here is Mrs Bear walking under Anne’s portrait on the way out. Overall, I am pleased that the Foundation has done such a good job preserving Anne’s story and legacy, but also moderately irritated that a developer could have wanted to destroy this memory… kind of the Ying and Yang of human processing !!
The Adventures of Barry Brink 