Anne Frank House

 

So, finally, after years of living here and being in fact walking distance from this place, I have finally decided to check it out. Can't really explain why I had not visited earlier, probably because its here and I had no sense of urgency - also its usually on top of the lists for tourists visiting Amsterdam so I kinda didn't wan't to be one of them. But now as I just re-read Anne's diary and finished the book written by her helper Miep Gies + I watched several excellent documentaries, now I was ready to see the building. In fact, I was curious to see it with my own eyes because even though informations are online, I did not have clear idea about the rooms and living arrangements of people in hiding. Like with everything else in life, it simply had to be the right moment and now I was ready to visit the famous hiding place. 

And that is exactly what it is - the hiding place - I always find it strange that its called "Anne Frank House" when actually it was not, real Anne Frank House was completely different house on another part of town, a very nice and respectable neighbourhood in Amsterdam South where new spacious apartment buildings were built in 1920s and where many German immigrants found a new start, after escaping Nazi Germany. I have been there and its a very pretty area called Merwedeplein where the old Frank apartment still exist and Dutch government uses it as a safe place for foreign writers who cannot work freely in their own countries. Not possible to visit it, as the place is used but its possible to see it online HERE. Back to Prinsengracht 263 where her father had a successful business and in fact the building was used as the warehouse and the main office for his company that was selling mixes of spices for jam making. The office and work was focused on the street side of the building (a typical Dutch house, completely ordinary from outside) but the Frank family and their friends were hiding in the house at the back which was not really visible from the front. 

Seeing it with my own eyes finally made it clear why hiding was so dangerous and tricky: the rooms where Frank family were using, were actually immediately above warehouse so it was utmost important that the family don't make any noises during the day as workers downstairs could hear them. And let me tell you, the wooden floor is creaky which completely creeped me out and that is why Franks walked around barefoot and in fact preferred to spend their daytime one floor above where was the kitchen/living room (also used by van Pels family as their bedroom in the evenings). Van Pels also had a teenage son, sweet shy Peter who had his own corner next to stairs leading to the attic. All the books in the world can not explain the rooms as good as seeing it with one's own eyes, its just different. Ah yes, the rooms are unfurnished - as Gestapo took everything they found in the hiding place, Otto Frank did not want to put anything else in there - it is enough to see the space and feel the oppressive atmosphere to understand how dangerous their daily life was.

Just before we entered the building, I was suspicious about mostly young crowd and all these kids waiting in line and being playful - I was prepared that they will be annoying and not serious once we go inside. To my biggest surprise, the crowd actually got very subdued and serious as we walked from room to room and once we climbed to the attic people were actually completely silent, some even cried. I started weeping when faced with a little exhibition about Anne's sister Margot who by all accounts was a real sweetheart but ended up eclipsed by her famous younger sibling - than there was a new exhibition (situated in a new building next to Otto Frank's office) titled ‘Who's gone?’ - The Jewish Lyceum 1941-1943 about all the other children from Anne's old neighbourhood who during the war were either arrested & deported or went into hiding: it makes clear point that Anne was just one of the 500 kids who suffered the same fate. In fact, there is a excellent documentary about the rest of the kids who went to same class with her. By this point my eyes were blinded by tears and I could hardly read explanations on the walls in front of me.

 

As the right wing is raising their ugly head again all over the Europe, I am aware of Holocaust deniers and others who are continuously trying to somehow "prove" that this was all just a big conspiracy. I read with alarm how my own homeland is full of history revisionists and nationalists who wrap themselves in a flag and choose to interpret their own version of history - many of them have their own conspiracy theories and repeat often told lie about the diary was a forgery. It bothered me a lot but I was aware that arguing with the strangers online would not help or change their mind if they already decided that the world is conspiracy, so I decided not to engage with them (it was also my New Year resolution, not to feed such people with my energy and time). I was glad that I visited the place and that it all came in the right moment, just as I read the diary so everything was fresh in my head. 

"Anne Frank Remembered" by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold (1987)

 

Immediately as I finished Anne Frank diary, I started this book. "Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family" was written by Miep Gies who worked as a secretary for Otto Frank and who (along with several other employees in his office) knew and supported family in hiding. In fact, she was the main person responsible for bringing them food during years in the hiding place. Since she was so close involved in everything, her story very closely matches Anne Frank's diary but with a wider perspective - while Anne was basically describing what the life in hiding looked like, Miep Gies could tell more about the atmosphere in the city during the war, the dangers of everyday life in occupied Amsterdam and her own point of view. While Anne's diary was moving, this was less sentimental, more realistic close look at reality around  them during those years. 

By some incredible accident that later proved to be extremely important, Miep Gies was the right person in the right time: she was born in Vienna and sent to The Netherlands as a child to recuperate from hunger and weak health. That means that she spoke fluent German and Dutch, which was helpful when she came in contact with the rest of Frank family, who often privately spoke German. Because she refused to join Nazi women's group, her Austrian passport was invalidated and she was supposed to be deported back to Austria, until she eventually got married to her Dutch boyfriend. On the day of arrest, it was Austrian SS officer Silberbauer who discovered the hiding place and who also arrested the men working in Otto Frank's office but did not want to arrest a fellow Austrian girl (another girl, Bep have escaped and went into hiding herself). So Miep was let go and it was herself who went quickly in the attic and saved Anne Frank's diary (the rest of what was in the hiding place, all the clothes, personal property and furniture was confiscated). 

I find this book incredibly gripping because, more than even Anne's diary itself, it describes first hand witness to war years in Amsterdam. This is someone who actually biked trough the occupied city every day on her way to work (until it became too dangerous because Germans could steal her bike, so she had to walk) and constantly searched for the food to feed her friends. Miep herself was not completely aware of the tensions between people in hiding and we understand that in front of her they all kept their mutual arguments hidden. She could tell there was some sort of unpleasant atmosphere but this is understandable considering the situation and lack of privacy. After the arrest of Frank family and their friends, Miep went trough a difficult hunger period during 1944-1945 and she describes in detail how hard it was to survive winter without electricity, gas, heat and food. Luckily she survived and even welcomed Otto Frank back when he returned from Germany (he lived with Miep and her husband for a while, as his family perished in concentration camps). There is also a Oscar-winning documentary with the same name as the book and I was glad to find out that Miep was actually given standing ovation during award ceremony. 

"People every-where in Amsterdam were perishing daily of starvation. Sometimes they would just sit down at the side of the road and die. Sometimes they were so weak that they died of diphtheria, typhoid, or just the cold. Neighborhood soup kitchens had been set up, and each day people would line up in the cold to get a bucket of something warm to put in their stomachs.

All day people scavenged for bits of coal in the old coal yards. Railroad ties were dug up for the wood. If you had a wooden staircase standing in the garden or against the wall outside, you might wake up in the morning and find your staircase gone. Any houses left empty were stripped of wood from windows, stairways, furniture, anything." 

"The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank (1947)

 

I have several books written by people in Anne Frank orbit but before I turn to them, it occurred to me that it might be good idea to re-visit a famous diary again - after all, I read it as a teenager myself and most of it probably went over my head back than + I am different person now than I was at 13 so I hoped to read it with better understanding and with a different perspective. This will be the only exception to my decision that in 2026 I read only authors I never read before: everybody else that I read this year was my first-time introduction. To be honest, its been more than four decades between reading it than and now, so its almost as a total new experience.

Sure, I was familiar with the story itself - not only via documentaries and articles online, but a famous Westertoren church tower that she used to see from her hiding place is a familiar spot where I walk into city centre. I have also visited the neighbourhood in Amsterdam South where Frank family actually owned apartment (many German-Jewish families lived there), also saw the bookshop where her father bought her the diary as a birthday present, her school and the sculpture standing in the middle of the square where family used to live. All of this means that the ghost of Anne Frank is always present around the city but since I live here, I didn't feel the urge to either re-read her diary or visit the hiding place. I would if I only visit Amsterdam and than it would be on top of my list of places to visit, but I am here every day and was secretly thinking it would be a depressing experience. However, if I want to read memoirs of people connected to her story, it would just make sense to first go back to the roots of the story, her own diary. 

At the start, young Anne is just an ordinary schoolgirl, a chatterbox preoccupied with boys, flirting and her school friends. But very soon the dark clouds start gathering and when her older sister Margot gets official call to report to Gestapo, the family quickly goes into hiding, sooner than they had planned. Initially I think they were actually fairly comfortable just four of them, but soon they accept other people to join them and this is when real struggle begin, since being locked up in silence and limited space started to put pressure on everybody in hiding. Anne's diary swings between her teenage obsessions and descriptions of life in hiding - while its heartbreaking (and easily understood) that teenage girl feels so passionately about movie stars, boys, her hair or fashion, its the other parts of diary that are much more interesting to me, like stories about survival, bombing of Amsterdam, police on the streets, children breaking the windows and stealing everything  that I personally find gripping.

"Little children, eight- and eleven-year-olds, smash the windows of people's homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. People don't dare leave the house for even five minutes, since they're liable to come back and find all their belongings gone. Every day the newspapers are filled with reward notices for the return of stolen typewriters, Persian rugs, electric clocks, fabrics, etc. The electric clocks on street corners are dismantled, public phones are stripped down to the last wire." 

While her teenage musings might seem repetitive, it is exactly because of them that Anne  still touches so many people around the world because we all understand where she comes from - we all went trough the puberty and our own dilemmas, arguments with parents and phases where hormones shift between high and low. However, it was the story about life in hiding and wartime Amsterdam that deeply resonated with me and I read it surprisingly quickly, with greatest interest. I am actually going to visit her hiding place next week.