Anne Frank was born June 12th, 1929. On her thirteenth birthday, about a month before she and her family went into hiding, she got a diary as a present. Because of that present, we know her story…
I have a copy of that diary, “Anne Frank: the diary of a young girl” 1952. It was published in Dutch in 1947. In 1950, the book was published in German and French. Not until 1952, was the book published in English.
As well as reading that book, I have “The Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story”. This book tells the story about Anne Frank and her family, as a guide of the house itself, now a museum. There is much background history, and photographs of the family, along with the building itself, and all of the rooms. The building was where Anne Frank’s father had worked at. This book also goes into details of how they lived, in the ‘secret annex”, when the family was arrested, and where they ended in concentration camps, and when they died. Anne’s father was the only survivor.
Between reading the diary, and this book about her, one is really moved. The only way to be even more emotional about her story, would to actually walk in the house/museum. A few years back, a friend and I visited Germany, and rented a car to drive to Amsterdam. We visited the museum.
This is a postcard of the secret passage and bookcase door. The other postcard is of the house. Anne Frank and her family lived on the top several floors in the back of the triangle-shaped roof building. I walked through that hidden passage behind the bookcase. I saw where Anne slept, pinned pictures on the wall, where her family and a few others secretly lived for twenty five months, where she wrote her diary. I walked through the rest of the museum that went through her history before and after living in those hidden rooms.
It was the most emotional place that I have ever been in and walked through-all made so personal because of this one little girl. We cannot forget her story…and her hope.
This is a statue of Anne Frank in a small square just around the corner from the house. What was very sad, is that just before I had the picture taken, there were civil servants cleaning graffiti on the ground in front of the statue. Hate was still being painted and spread in the area.
“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” – Anne Frank
Librarytomes 