A trip to Amsterdam
My sister was here to visit and since she wanted to see the Anne Frank house, we made a trip into Amsterdam. We went early to avoid the long lines that can sometimes develop at the museum. We took the train in, since we cant really get into Amsterdam by car in the mornings, unless we head in before 6 in the morning. Sections of the highway become a parking lot with morning commuters. We used to be able to buy what was called a strip card to ride the buses and trams in the cities, but this has been done away with. Instead residents can go through a fairly complicated two day process to get a special card which they can then load with money electronically to use to pay for passage on buses and trams. However you cannot use this chipcard to pay for anyone else riding with you, so anyone not possessing the chipcard must buy a day pass. It cost 7 Euros each - about 10 dollars. Since the house was only a mile or so from the train station we decided to hoof it and save our money. We got into the museum in short order and shuffled our way through the exhibit and then into the Annex itself. We both had just finished rereading Anne's diary while on our trip through England so the events that she wrote about were still fresh in our minds. She and the others suffered a lot living in such tight quarters. I recognized the tremendous stress the occupants were living under from the quarrels and behavior that Anne wrote about. The museum is empty of furniture and it is sometimes hard to imagine how crowded and cramped it was there. However there are two things which poignantly bring back to me the human factor of this empty place. One is the pictures that Anne pasted on her wall - movie stars, cute children, colorful photos. She was just a girl when she went into hiding.
The other was the small map on the wall where they were using pins to plot the Allies advancement towards the city. It made me think of what hope they had to finally be free of their little prison.
Just a month before the Allies made it to Amsterdam, someone made an anonymous phone call to the police and turned in these folks. How evil is a heart that would do such a thing. The Germans were losing. They were being pushed back. Many, many Dutch people opposed the Nazis and there was much done to save Jews and others from death in Holland, but there were also those who collaborated and there was even a Dutch Nazi party.
Antisemitism knows no national border. It can be found everywhere.
No one has ever found out who did it. They were on the last train that left the area for the death camps. Everyone, but Anne's father perished in the concentration camps. Her mother, her sister, the single man who joined them, and a family of husband, wife and teenage son. All dead. Anne herself died of illness just a month before the end of the war itself. Perhaps if she had known her father was still alive, she might have held on. Perhaps the accumulation or stress and suffering over those years of confinement had finally robbed her of the will to live and even the physical strength to stay healthy. I do not know.
I do know she has put a face on the holocaust like no one else has.
My sister was here to visit and since she wanted to see the Anne Frank house, we made a trip into Amsterdam. We went early to avoid the long lines that can sometimes develop at the museum. We took the train in, since we cant really get into Amsterdam by car in the mornings, unless we head in before 6 in the morning. Sections of the highway become a parking lot with morning commuters. We used to be able to buy what was called a strip card to ride the buses and trams in the cities, but this has been done away with. Instead residents can go through a fairly complicated two day process to get a special card which they can then load with money electronically to use to pay for passage on buses and trams. However you cannot use this chipcard to pay for anyone else riding with you, so anyone not possessing the chipcard must buy a day pass. It cost 7 Euros each - about 10 dollars. Since the house was only a mile or so from the train station we decided to hoof it and save our money. We got into the museum in short order and shuffled our way through the exhibit and then into the Annex itself. We both had just finished rereading Anne's diary while on our trip through England so the events that she wrote about were still fresh in our minds. She and the others suffered a lot living in such tight quarters. I recognized the tremendous stress the occupants were living under from the quarrels and behavior that Anne wrote about. The museum is empty of furniture and it is sometimes hard to imagine how crowded and cramped it was there. However there are two things which poignantly bring back to me the human factor of this empty place. One is the pictures that Anne pasted on her wall - movie stars, cute children, colorful photos. She was just a girl when she went into hiding.
The other was the small map on the wall where they were using pins to plot the Allies advancement towards the city. It made me think of what hope they had to finally be free of their little prison.
Just a month before the Allies made it to Amsterdam, someone made an anonymous phone call to the police and turned in these folks. How evil is a heart that would do such a thing. The Germans were losing. They were being pushed back. Many, many Dutch people opposed the Nazis and there was much done to save Jews and others from death in Holland, but there were also those who collaborated and there was even a Dutch Nazi party.
Antisemitism knows no national border. It can be found everywhere.
No one has ever found out who did it. They were on the last train that left the area for the death camps. Everyone, but Anne's father perished in the concentration camps. Her mother, her sister, the single man who joined them, and a family of husband, wife and teenage son. All dead. Anne herself died of illness just a month before the end of the war itself. Perhaps if she had known her father was still alive, she might have held on. Perhaps the accumulation or stress and suffering over those years of confinement had finally robbed her of the will to live and even the physical strength to stay healthy. I do not know.
I do know she has put a face on the holocaust like no one else has.
2 comments:
If only they hadn't relaxed so much in fixing that last batch of strawberries.
I have been observing lately these sorts of things - the best laid plans that heart-breakingly fall short of fruition. The Valkyrie plot, the Franks, stories of firemen from 9/11, the struggles of the good to overcome the evil that this world holds. And yet Anne Frank herself said she could only believe that despite all the evil, people were basically good at heart. I'm glad, in a sense, that she had that kind of youthful optimism in the face of such contradiction to it - I hope it gave her some peace in her last days.
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