Tonight I got to experience one of those tours that really left me speechless. I had done previous research in school about the Holocaust, so this tour really meant something to me. We arrived about 5 minutes before the tour started. Ordering tickets online was the best idea because we got to bypass the line.
Short summary of who Anne Frank was:
Anne was one of the millions of victims of the persecution of the Jews during World War II. She lived in Germany when, in 1933, Hitler came to power and installed an anti-jewish regime there. For their own safety, the Jewish Frank family fled to the Netherlands. However, in May 1940, the German army occupied the Netherlands and repressive measures against jews followed there as well. The Frank family hoped to escape these by going into hiding.
Anne Frank kept a diary the entire time she lived in hiding. She mostly wrote about her personal thoughts and feelings, the isolation, and the constant fear of being discovered.
Anne and her family were all captured and sent to concentration camps. Her father, Otto, was the only one who made it out alive.
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* I wanted to take a bunch of pictures but realized when I had got there that no cameras where allowed to be used. I learned of that after I had snapped a couple of photos, which are listed below.*
The tour started with some backstory to the location of her house, then we moved to the entrance and front door to Anne's fathers office. Otto Frank ran 2 companies. The first was Opekta, a jelling agent used to make jam. The second was Pectacon. Pectacon was a company that produced seasonings for meat. The family hid upstairs in a secret annex without the warehousemen knowing about them. There was an original typewriter that was used in the office still up there with some other letters and such.
Next, we moved to a small room with a moveable bookcase. This was the bookcase that hid a door that led to a secret annex where Anne and her family stayed in hiding. The bookcase looked very old and well preserved. You had to duck to enter as the opening wasn't too big. Once inside, we climbed a steep flight of steps leading up to Otto, Edith, and Margot Frank's room. This room also doubled as the living room. Anne and Fritz shared a room next door. Her room looked just like it did in 1945, with original wallpaper and picture cutouts glued to the wall. The eerie part was seeing her height marks tallied on her wall, still perfectly preserved.
Next, we toured their bathroom. It was very small with the same porcelain toilet that they used. They had to be very quiet when using the restroom because flowing water from upstairs would have tipped off the warehousemen. The floors creaked and were warping, creating a very unsettling feeling and sound. We then were led to the room that housed all of Anne's original diaries. This was probably the coolest part of the whole tour was to see the original work on paper. Her father, Otto, had the diaries published.
All in all, the tour was very much worth it. It exceeded my expectations in every way.
12:45AM now. Time to start making some phone calls to the fam....I think about calling when I wake up but then realize its usually 2AM back home. Tomorrow, we are visiting a police headquarters. Should be pretty cool!
Goodnight!
-Kavi
