Amsterdam 2015: Anne Frank House and Resistance Museum

Note of warning!  If you want to go visit the Anne Frank House, regardless of the day of the week or time of day, you would be well advised to try and book an online ticket first.  Despite getting free admission with our Museumkaart, we were told that for half a Euro per ticket, we should reserve a time slot to get into the house.  We were lucky enough to secure the first booking of the day, which was 9am on a Wednesday.  We arrived at 8:45am and were aghast at the length of the lineup for people without tickets, which wrapped around several streets.  In fact, we saw the tail-end of a lineup when we were blocks away from our destination and wondered what they were waiting for–it was the Anne Frank House!  This was on a Wednesday in May, so imagine the crowds on a weekend in July! By contrast, we walked up to the reserved online ticket entrance and were 4th and 5th in line for our 9am entry.

Anne Frank, her family, along with Hermann and Auguste Van Pel, their son Peter, and Dr. Fritz Pfeffer hid for just over two years in the secret upper floor apartments of the canal house on 263 Prinsengracht.  This was the location of the warehouse and offices of her father Otto’s business, which were situated on the lower floors of the building.  A swinging bookcase was built to hide the hidden staircase leading to the upstairs refuge.  Today, the house stands intact and open for visitors, but is devoid of any furnishings as per the wishes of Otto Frank.  The two adjoining buildings are set up as a museum that provides background into the history of the Frank family, and contains the actual diary.  The self-guided tour of the Anne Frank House starts in these two museum buildings, where you encounter some of Anne’s powerful words: “A voice inside me screams to go outside in the open air and laugh”, “The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews.”, “I want to go on living after my death”.  Those last words were definitely prophetic as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” became a bestseller, has been translated and published around the world and won a Pulitzer Prize.

A detailed model of the house gives you a good idea of the living conditions of the people in hiding.  Various videos played as you walked through the museum section, with interviews given by survivors who remembered Anne.  Miep Gies, one of Otto’s trusted employees, brought food and news regularly. Hannah Goslar was Anne’s friend and neighbour was kept in another part of the concentration camp where Anne was held, separated by a tall fence.  Goslar received better treatment in her section because she had foreign citizenship from a neutral country and therefore received more food rations.  Somehow she was able to find Anne and tried to toss her food packages over the fence.  Goslar told the heartbreaking story about how Anne had given up hope and the will to live because she thought her whole family was dead.  Had she known that her father was still alive, she might have had the strength to wait out the last few months before the war ended and the concentration camps were liberated.  Sadly, like her mother and sister Margo, Anne died before this happened.  Otto Frank described how he felt when he read Anne’s diary after war, indicating that he never realized the depths of her thoughts and feelings.  He worked tirelessly to fulfill her wish of becoming a published writer.

Finally we entered the actual house, walked through the old offices and came up to the swinging bookcase that revealed the steep stairs leading to the hiding place.  In the secret annex, we saw the windows that were still covered with black cloth that could only be opened a crack during the day.   The people in hiding also had to be extremely still and quiet so that their presence would not be detected by the office workers below.  The rooms were almost bare except for a few personal items that were left on the walls.  Anne tried to make her room cheerier by pasting clippings from magazines of movie stars and images that she liked, while a board game that Peter had received for his 16^th birthday has been mounted on his wall.  There were markings on another wall that tracked the heights Anne and Margo as they grew over the two years in hiding.   It must have been extremely restrictive and constraining to be trapped inside for two years without being able to feel the sun, but I was actually surprised by how much space the people had to live in.  I envisioned them all huddled together in a tiny room, but they actually had two floors and an attic.  Mr.& Mrs. Frank, Mr. & Mrs. Van Pel and Margo each had their own room, while Anne shared hers with Dr. Pfeffer (much to her annoyance) and Peter slept in the loft in the attic.

After touring the house, we returned to the museum where we saw actual pages from the famous diary, as well as printings of the book in multiple languages.  A final video called “Reflections of Anne Frank” showed clips of actors, writers, politicians and other visitors to the museum, discussing Anne’s legacy and how it affected them.  While there were the expected words about inspiration, courage and legacy, a few comments stood out in my mind.  Emma Thompson gave a speech at the house where she said “… All her would-haves are our real possibilities. All her would-haves are our opportunities. And the book's a flame, a torch …”  Author John Green, who wrote “The Fault in Our Stars” which has a scene at the Anne Frank House, described viewing the book containing the names of the victims of the Holocaust.  “The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but … beneath her name there were four Aron Franks … without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.”  And finally, there was the comment from an elderly World War II veteran who noted “Now I understand why I fought.”

The curators at the Anne Frank House did a wonderful job of paying tribute to this brave and talented girl.  They provided enough details for you to understand the enormity of what Anne and her family went through and to feel for the senseless waste of human life and potential, yet left you with a sense of inspiration from Anne’s words and hope for a better future.   Photography is not allowed in the Anne Frank House, and for once, it was a policy I wholeheartedly agreed with.  Such a touristy action would seem crass and demeaning in this context.  It was much better just to observe, absorb and reflect.

After touring the Anne Frank House, it seemed appropriate that we should also visit the Amsterdam Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) to get further perspective on the impact of the occupation on the Dutch people and their efforts to oppose  Nazi rule.  There were placards containing a photo and brief details of various Dutch residents during the occupation period of 1940-45, ranging from regular people just trying to survive, to active resistance fighters doing what they could to help the cause.

Naively, I was expecting “Hollywood-like” stories of courageous rebels triumphing against the axis of evil.  Instead, reading a series of personal biographies about the Dutch resistance fighters, the sobering reality set in that despite their acts of bravery and heroism, most of them were captured and executed, or died in concentration camps.  One story that struck a chord with me dealt with “red-haired student Hannie Schaft” whose role in her communist resistance group was to assassinate traitors.  To disguise herself, she dyes her tell-tale red hair black and puts on spectacles (on display at the museum), but is caught just before the war ends and is executed.

Another biography has an interesting tie to Anne Frank.  It is about her friend and neighbour Eva Geiringer, whose family also went into hiding but were captured and sent to concentration camps.  Eva’s father and brother did not survive, but during their period in hiding, they created 30 paintings which they secreted under the floor.  Like Anne’s diary, the paintings expressed the torment of confinement and the desire for freedom.  After the war, Otto Frank married Eva’s mother and they formed a new family.

The museum shows many examples of how the Dutch tried to resist Nazi rule including helping people go into hiding, planning escape routes for both Jews and Allied soldiers and forging identity papers.  A huge general strike was held on February 1941 to protest anti-Jewish measures.  One of the typewriters used by housewife Corba Velman to print pamphlets calling for the strike is on display in the museum.  Velman was arrested while handing out these pamphlets and the strike was quashed the next day.  The Resistance Museum also exhibits printing presses from underground newspapers, examples of armed resistance including guns hidden in baby carriages, and espionage gadgets such as microfilm hidden in razors and watches.

Artifacts made by resistance prisoners in order to keep their spirits up included a mini Christmas tree and playing cards made of cardboard and a series of tapping codes used by prisoners to communicate with each other via the heating pipes.  There was a poem written in blood using a straw as a pen.  One woman was able to conceal a photo of her baby daughter and being able to look at it gave her the strength to survive her ordeal.

The Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam Resistance Museum was set up by former members of the resistance movement in 1984, with the goal of “informing visitors about the most dramatic episode in recent history and to make them think.”  The main theme of the museum dealt with the three ways the Dutch people dealt with the Nazi regime–collaborate, adapt or resist, and asked the question “What would you do in such a situation?”  Examples were given of people who fell into each of these categories.   With the life or death of you and your family at stake, it is not that easy a question to answer.