The shadow life.
My visit to the Anne Frank House,
Amsterdam, Netherlands
One young girl, only 13, has touched the world by simply writing a diary. She was a prisoner of a time and place that seems almost forgotten yet Anne Frank's legacy remains. Anne was 13 when she and her family went into hiding at her father's business warehouse in Amsterdam. They were Jews, they wore the gold star. Their lives had been challenging and restricted in Amsterdam and yet the war raged on. The Dutch government had been exiled to England. Everyday Jews were being rounded up and shipped off to locales far away. Anne's sister Margot had her "number" called which meant she was to head off to unknown atrocities of the Nazi regime, so Anne's parents prepared a place of hiding, the "annex" where she and her family would wait our the war in hiding.
I made sure to make the trek to the Anne Frank house while on a recent visit to Amsterdam. It was a simple canal house and warehouse for a jam business. Nothing spectacular but a spacious business on a canal in Amsterdam. Imagine, heading off with your family to an almost warehouse which was to be your new home for an undetermined amount of time, Then imagine being only a young girl of 13 who was full of life, who had friends and young beaus and play times and school and parties to go to, a girl in the prime of her young life trapped, caged, for two years, yet this entrapment was meant to save your life.
- I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free, and yet I can't let it show. Just imagine what would happen if all eight of us were to feel sorry for ourselves or walk around with the discontent clearly visible on our faces. Where would that get us? (December 24, 1943)
The rooms of the warehouse were plain and simple, brick walls, wooden floors, a fireplace for heat. The rooms contained a few desks and chairs, jam posters were on the wall, there was a spice grinding room for spices added to jam. Simple.
Anne and her sister and parents, a couple friend of her parents and their son and eventually the family dentist, lived, ate breathed and slept in a few rooms at the top of this canal house for two years. They left the life and the home they loved, leaving even their beloved cat behind, no friends, no games, no riding bikes. Pouf, in an instant, they all were gone. This was your life now, at the top of a jam warehouse. Almost silent. They listened to the radio only at night once the warehouse employees were gone home for the evening. They walked gingerly throughout the day. Trying to remain silent, in hiding, living a shadow life. Yet Anne wrote and wrote and recorded her thoughts.
- Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. (June 20, 1942)
As I climbed the steps upward and upward, with the last set of fixed steps literally almost a ladder, my Tiffany bracelet hit the steps, I was undone. My life a life that never experienced war on my home soil, never in hiding, living a life of abundance in America, all of that came clanging down on me with one little clink of a silver charm on a wooden stair. War and anger and unspeakable tragedy had struck Europe and the Jews and little Anne's life while I at 13 lived in great abundance. If I had been alone in that house I would have sat down and cried.
Why do Anne's words touch us so? She is no literary giant, she writes simply as a young girl. She had not many life experiences about which to write, she was only 13, yet Anne's story touched us because it is a small glimpse, behind the unimaginable scene, of war and a young girl's experience. Her words offer a true glimpse into a young persons view of this shadow life and we are moved. We can identify with Anne's thoughts and dreams because we were all young once and to be trapped, at the prime of our youth, would be unthinkable.
Yet Anne survived, if only for a short while. And her thoughts remain with all of us who have read her diary. She intended to pursue life as a famous author, her words have realized her dream on her behalf even though Anne never lived to see or experience her success.
- I don't want to live in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! (April 5, 1944)
Two years, of life in an annex of a warehouse, came crashing down when someone turned the hidden souls in to the authorities. Exposed. Betrayed. Undone. Anne and all her family were shipped off to the Nazi concentration camp. The nightmare was realized. Anne died in March of 1945 and the camps were liberated in June 1945. So close yet Anne did not see the liberation. She and all of her family, except her father, Otto Frank. perished at the hand of the Nazi's.
Mr. Frank, left alone, liberated, to head out into a life alone. I cannot imagine his grief or pain.
Yet he, edited and published her diary, which friends had saved. He thought it was an important legacy for his daughter. His words touch me even now, as he read his daughter's diary he said " It showed me that parents never really know their children."
The lesson lies in Otto Frank's words; do we, do I know the true hearts of the ones I love or would their words be a shock to me? The lesson is to know our hearts and the hearts of the ones we love. Time is short for all of us and love needs to be shown and showered and lavished upon our own dear ones. We never know what fate for us lies ahead. At least war teaches us that, the sharing of good lives and the lavishing of love to our own is what life is all about. This is what held the Frank family together and should for us be the same.
I will be forever grateful to Anne and her diary and her words, for they have touched my heart.
My life has been enriched by a single visit to a simple jam warehouse, in Amsterdam.
*Anne Frank quotes from "About.com"
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