Amsterdam, Holland Anne Frank House

It was cloudy with a bit of rain, but not cold. We walked around town looking at the unique buildings. We went to Anne Frank house; the timing was good because there was a short line when we went in and a very long line when we came out.

Anne Frank House
Anyone who has not read the book or seen the movie about Anne Frank should do so or at least check the Internet. The Frank family fled to the Netherlands from Germany in 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany. In May 1940 Nazis occupied the Netherlands and the repression of Jews increased. By going into hiding the Frank family hoped to escape. Originally in May 1942 Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne went into hiding in the annex of the building they owned. Later they were joined in hiding in the annex by Fritz Pfeffer, Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter. Altogether there were 8 people hiding in the annex for more than 2 years when someone betrayed them. They were taken away by the Nazis along with 2 of the 4 people that were helping them. The helpers survived but 7 of the 8 people in hiding died, the only survivor was Otto Frank, Anne’s father.
Anne wrote in her diary while they were in hiding about every day life in the annex, the isolation and the constant fear of being discovered. She wanted to be a writer and publish a book called “The Secret Annex.” Other people who had been helping the Franks found Anne’s diary after they were arrested and saved it and gave it to Otto after the war. Her father decided to publish her diaries in 1947 and it has been translated into more than 60 languages since then. Anne Frank house has been open to the public since 1960 and each year many visiting school groups participate in one of the museum’s educational programs. This was a very touching experience to go through the house and see the memorabilia especially art work on the wall that Anne did and excerpts of her diary. Although these people were only one of the thousands that suffered in hiding and the millions that died because of Hitler’s extermination policies it has such an impact because you can visualize what it was like for them in hiding.

Red Light District
Then on a totally different type of experience we walked over to the Red Light District where the prostitutes have small rooms with windows and sit and wait for customers. Mostly you had to go into the side streets to the see the prostitutes. It was interesting, but the streets were lined with litter and there were frequent street cleaning machines with 2 men walking in front with straw brooms pushing the litter in front of the machines trying to keep the streets clean, they were not very successful.

After we rested we went out for supper not far from the hotel to a Chinese place I had seen. The place was called Walk with Wok. The food was very good and a reasonable price (at least for Europe) but I was fascinated watching them cook the food. You pick out what you want e.g. egg noodles, shrimp, mushrooms, etc and then they cook it fresh right in the front of the restaurant. It is similar to the Japanese cooking you find in the malls. For the egg noodles the start by putting in an egg, then the vegetables etc and then the noodles. All around an interesting day.