Anne Frank House

As I headed out this morning, a middle-aged couple approached me on the street. “D-a-m” “S-qua-re?” they enunciated with great care. [Evidently I don't look like a tourist, which is good.] I smiled and apologized for not being able to help them.

Until I began researching things to see in Amsterdam, I had long forgotten that this was the city where Anne Frank and her family had lived, and hid (until they were betrayed). It's possible to queue up in the afternoon for a chance to visit the Anne Frank House without an advance reservation. But when I looked at the website last night, there was exactly one reservable ticket left for today. That was meant for me.

It's been a long time since I read The Diary of Anne Frank—probably around the same age as Anne was when she wrote. I wasn't sure what to expect. Historical narrative. Some artifacts. A glimpse of “The Secret Annex.”

I was surely not expecting to pass beyond the hinged bookcase and walk through the actual rooms where they'd lived.

Our group climbed the stairs and moved along in near silence, reading the explanatory placards. The rooms are bare, as her father wished them to remain. In the room that Anne shared, sections of the original wall covering have been preserved and hung in place—there were the images clipped from newspapers and pasted 70-odd years ago by a young girl clinging to hope for a return to normal life.

At any time, this would be a wrenching emotional experience. At this moment in world history, it was nearly overwhelming.

Among the artifacts in the museum is a book, a grim registry of typewritten pages, opened to the page recording the names of Annelies and the members of her family. The display draws your attention to their names; let your eye wander to the names above and below, through the columns to the left and right. Only then will you see that both pages are filled with the names of other Franks, which certainly spill onto the unseen preceding and following pages.

Anne's father tried to immigrate, with his family, to the United States. That door was shut tight. A few years ago, a New York Times article cited a 1941 State Department memorandum:

At a time like this, when the safety of the country is imperiled, it seems fully justifiable to resolve any possible doubts in favor of the country, rather than in favor of the aliens concerned.

The “aliens concerned” perished.

The nations of our world have yet to learn these lessons.