This morning we took a tram to Dam Square in Amsterdam and walked to the Anne Frank house museum. It was early when we got there and there was already a pretty lengthy line forming outside. When you first walk into the museum/Otto house there are quotes from her book chiseled into the wall. You begin in the main family quarters of their house where Maip and her husband lived. You take a very narrow and steep, almost walking straight up a wall, into the bedroom and living room. The entire house was renovated after the war but they used the same wall paper and flooring as the original. After turning the corner of Frank Otto's office you see the bookshelf that was actually the hidden door to the secret annex. The book case is the original and its surreal to hold the exact handle Anne used to pull the door shut for hiding during the day. One entering through the bookshelf door you take an even more steep and narrow, and quite scary, staircase up to their secret annex. When they renovated the house they cut out the original wall paper from their room because Anne loved to cut pictures and comics from books, newspapers, and magazines and glue them up on the wall for decoration. She had pictures of famous actors and actresses from the 1940's as well as a picture of the statue of David, gardens, parrots, and funny little comics from the morning paper. The windows in their annex were covered in black curtains to keep the Nazi's from seeing inside or suspecting Jews of hiding. And from their secret annex is the staircase up to the attic where she did a lot of her writing and "got fresh air to get the stale air from their bedroom out." You can also see the famous chestnut tree from the attic which she wrote about numerous times in her diary.
Down on the main floor of the house are display cases set up with her original diaries set out to read as well as some scrap pieces of paper which she wrote fairy tales on. Also in display cases are the confinement cards which were filled out when the Frank family was captures. On the actually marked off list of hiding Jews was Anne Frank marked as number 309. Under a picture of her is the card filled out by a Nazi officer with her name, family information, place of confinement (Auschwitz), and the date of her death, one month after the date of her sister's death and one month before the liberation and freedom of her father. On the bottom of the old yellow card in red pencil was the signature of the Nazi who checked her body and the swatzika (spelling?) sign.
There are videos of Anne's father throughout the museum where he discusses how thankful he was to survive the Holocaust and spread his daughter's story and the knowledge of what discrimination and hate could do to a community and even the world. He seems to have been a very sweet man who loved his daughters and wife with everything and until the day he died, continued to work for their foundation and spread his knowledge to younger generations.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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