(Friday, Sept. 25) When we visited the Jewish Museum in Berlin, I learned, much to my surprise, that German Jews did not comprise the largest contingent of those carted off to labor and concentration camps by the Nazis during World War II. Our Amsterdam guide, Albert, would later tell us that percentage-wise, it was the Jewish population of the Netherlands who had the highest number deported to those camps. Anne Frank, the young girl from Amsterdam, is probably the most famous victim of the Holocaust, and the portion of her father’s commercial building where she and family hid from the Nazis for two years has been preserved as a museum visited by a million or more people from around the world each year.
Anne’s family left Germany in 1933 as the Nazis came to power. They moved to Amsterdam and led a normal life until the Germans occupied Holland and when, like other Jews, their ability to work in certain occupations, to engage in certain sporting or other social activities, were curtailed, and they were forced to wear a yellow “Star of David” on their clothing. Anne’s father had a business that made pectin products (used for jams and jellies). In the summer of 1942, he convinced the non-Jewish employees of his small company to help his family, and four other Jews, live in secrecy in the rear of the building. Ultimately, they were betrayed by a person or persons unknown, deported, and separated.
Seven of those who hid in the back of Otto Frank’s warehouse ultimately died, including Anne, who succumbed to typhus in March of 1945, shortly after her sister died in the same camp from the same disease, and unaware that her father was still alive in another camp. A month later, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne was incarcerated, was liberated by the Allies.
After WW II ended, Otto Frank finally made it back to Amsterdam, learning to his dismay, that his wife and children would never be reunited with him. He knew that Anne had written a diary during their two years of hiding out in his building, but he did not read it at time. By a miracle, the diary had been found and saved by one of his employee who helped the family escape deportation during 1942-44. Otto read it, had it published, and eventually The Diary of Anne Frank was being sold in American bookstores and became the basis for a Hollywood movie of the same name.
Today, the “Anne Frank Huis” sits along the Prinsengracht canal, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Anne’s journal entries are etched into the walls in Dutch and English, and the original diary was on display during our visit. But the building remains eerily unfurnished, at the request of Otto Frank. But the spaces feel confining, particularly where “blackout” curtains such as those used by the Franks shut out all daylight, and it is difficult to imagine spending a single day, let alone two years, locked up here.
Throughout the museum you continually find a charming photo of Anne Frank smiling back at you, even though it is doubtful that she smiled often during the two years she lived in the building, or at all, after being sent to the death camps. But without that face smiling back at the world now and forever, would the Holocaust simply become a footnote to a story in which over 50 million lives were lost?
