12/19: Amsterdam's Jordaan Walk & Heartbreaking Tour of Anne Frank House

About three months ago I returned from being away on vacation with a friend in New Zealand and Australia for 3.5 weeks. In case you also want to follow that really fun trip Down Under, here's a link to the newest blog: www.bergersadventures7.blogspot.com

After enjoying travel writer Rick Steves' Amsterdam City Walk so much the day before, we chose to next follow much of his Jordaan Walk, the neighborhood a little west of the center. It would also take us to the Anne Frank House where we had timed reservations.

The city's post office was considered ultramodern when it was built in 1899 atop a foundation of 4,500 pilings. After the 1980s, it became the upscale Magna Plaza Mall. 

In the last post I wrote about Amsterdam's famous gables along the rooftops which were false fronts to beautify the generally, sharply pitched roofs. Along a tiny street called Molsteeg, there were more intriguing gables from 'point' to 'bell' to 'step' shaped ones.

The house at number 5 Molsteeg dated from 1644 and was just one window wide. It was common of the city's old merchants' homes with a shop on the ground floor, living space in the middle, and storage in the attic. When we looked up, we spotted hooks above warehouse doors so that pulleys could be attached to hoist cargo, or, in these days, lift up a couch to come through the upper-story window.

Some homes had iron rods on the sides which acted as braces to reduce the amount of the homes leaning one way or another caused by the shifting of thousands of pilings hammered vertically into the marshy soil.

We soon noticed that almost all Amsterdam homes had big, tall windows to let in as much light as possible. Depending on the canal, homes were taxed on the width of their street frontage. 

The day before, we saw scads of bikes at the city's huge Centraal train station and here were lots more. According to Steves, the 820,000 residents own almost that many bikes and the Netherlands' 17 million people also own almost that many bikes with many people having both a long distance racing bike and a city bike intentionally kept in poor condition to deter the many bike thieves. I smiled when I read that Amsterdam's health clubs are more for networking than keeping fit as biking already does that!

The Torensluis Bridge was far wider than those we'd come across the day before because the Singel Canal under it was the original moat that ran around the old walled city. It was just one of many canals that measured approximately 50 miles of them!

A cute sign in a shop we walked by!

Even though it was rather gloomy when we there in mid December, the weather did nothing to detract from the stately, historic buildings we saw facing canal after canal. 

The 'big head' statue honored an early 19th century Amsterdam writer known by his pen name of Multatuli who wrote about the hard life of the Javanese people in the Dutch East Indies while working as a bureaucrat in the colonial system. Eduard Douwes Dekker, the first author to criticize Dutch colonial practices, has been referred to as the 'Dutch Rudyard Kipling' for his talent and subject matter.

Mixed in with the lovely old homes from the 17th century's  Amsterdam's Golden Age were these pretty ugly gray ones that were built for the university during the less affluent 1970s. 

The Grey Area was another of Amsterdam's thriving 'coffee shops,' meaning it was also licensed to sell marijuana. Steves indicated the shop's name referred to "the murky back side of the marijuana business, how coffee shops get their supply from wholesalers. That was the 'gray area' that Dutch laws have yet to sort out." This shop was a regular winner at the city's yearly Cannabis Cup Awards - surely, a 'high' honor!

This walking tour also took us back to the Herengracht, the canal we 'd seen yesterday from another perspective. It was named for the wealthy city merchants of the 17th century who lined it with their mansions.

The townhouse on the corner gave us a great view of the side view that, though it had a very narrow front entrance, it still stretched way back from the street. 

We could see why the Leliegracht has been described as one of the prettiest small canals in Amsterdam. As we walked along it for a bit, we happened to look up and noticed the beams that jutted out from the top that had cargo-hoisting hooks at the end.

For the first time in Amsterdam, we saw that some buildings along Leliegracht had steps that led below the street level to homes.

Fromm the Keisergracht Bridge, we had a fine view of the Astoria building which was typical of an architectural style called Amsterdam School. That referred to its geometrical windows, minimal ornamentation yet also a few mosaics and flowery reliefs.

Not far along the canal were steps that led down to a triangular pink stone that jutted out into the canal. It was part of the Homomonument that paid homage to homosexuals who lost their lives in WW II and to all those, in the past, present or future persecuted for their homosexuality. The pink triangle design there and in the adjoining Westermarkt Square was first used by the Nazis to signify homosexuals.

I was glad to see this kiosk in the square that sold Flemish, not French, fries was closed because that meant we could see the closed shutters featured great masterpieces of Western art with friets added to the paintings!

In the square was a cute little statue of Anne Frank whose family hid in a house just down the block.

The statue was near the end of  Westerkerk or Western Church that was built in 1631 and displayed the symbol of Amsterdam with its three Xs

The church tower had a carillon, a set of bells of different sizes and pitches, that was invented by Dutch bell makers in the 1400s. The carillon chimes every fifteen minutes and often plays full songs. When the Westerkerk's carillon played every day during WW II, the reassuring sound reminded Anne Frank and so many other Jewish Amsterdammers in hiding there was indeed an outside world. 

Rembrandt was buried in the church but no one knows where. 

As we still had time before our timed entrance to the Anne Frank House, we explored more of the area. We didn't mind in the least returning to the scenic Prinsengracht or the Princes' Canal that had far more houseboats in this section that what we'd seen yesterday. 

Years ago, I distinctly remember watching an episode of House Hunters International that featured potential buyers checking out which houseboat to buy in Amsterdam. That was the closest I ever came to seeing the inside of one! If we ever return to the Netherlands as we'd like to, perhaps we'll visit the Houseboat Museum in Amsterdam.

Cannabis and cocaine vodka anyone?!

When the Jordaan neighborhood was built in the 1600s it was a working class area, but it's recently become home to yuppies and artists. You know the overwhelming volume of junk mail we in North America receive on a constant basis. The Dutch, however, use stickers next to their mailboxes that either say Nee or Ja (no or yes) indicating to the mail carriers if they accept or refuse the junk mail.

Residents are permitted to have a 'front yard garden' on the condition it's no wider than one sidewalk tile!

The red metal bollards on the sidewalks known as Amsterdammertjes or 'little Amsterdammers' were installed in the 1970s to stop people from parking on the sidewalks.

I had trouble imagining living in one of these homes or apartments that had windows right on the street as the lack of privacy would get to me. 

Notice how this gray home was leaning badly due to the pilings underneath in the marshy soil? Even newly renovated homes were required to preserve the funky leaning angles and original wooden beams according to strict building codes from the 1980s. 

As you no doubt figured, brug means bridge in Dutch. This was yet another quiet canal lined with trees and old narrow houses topped with gables - a typical Amsterdam shot.

After almost walking in a full circle around the Jordaan neighborhood, we had a fantastic view of the impressive Westerkerk at the end of the lane. From this angle, we had a marvelous vantage point of the spire's crown shape which had been a gift from the Habsburg emperor, Maximilian I.

Along the lane was Electric Ladyland which called itself the First Museum of Fluorescent Art and had everything from minerals to stamps to candy and the the first fluorescent crayons from 1950s San Francisco! 

Yet another idyllic bridge overlooking a canal:

The front half of the building that was the Anne Frank House faced the canal and had offices and warehouses of an operating business during the war years. The Frank family and others lived in the back half which was the Secret Annex, whose entrance was concealed by a bookcase. 

In a diary entry from April 11 of 1944, Anne wrote that "One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews!"

Some background: Within a week of Germany's Luftwaffe bombing of the Amsterdam airport on May 10, 1940, the Netherlands were forced to surrender and the Nazis goose-stepped past the Westerkerk and hung mammoth swastikas on the Royal Palace in Dam Square we'd visited the previous day. When the five-year German occupation of the Netherlands began, there were 140,000 Jews in the country, 80,000 of were in Amsterdam. The Frank family had been unable to emigrate to England and went into hiding in this building in July of 1942 where they remained until they were discovered by Nazis on August 4, 1944. 

The following information will give you a sense of how the lives of the city's Jews changed so drastically from the Nazi invasion until the Franks went into hiding 26 months later. Jews were required to wear a visible yellow star if older than 5, register with the police, turn in their bicycles, forbidden to use trams, ride in cars, go to movie theaters, could only shop from 3-5, and only go to Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty salons or to be out on the streets from 8 pm to 6 am, school children could no longer attend their old schools. Of course, Christians couldn't visit homes where Jews lived.

The dots on the Amsterdam map represented exactly where Jews lived in the city, with each dot representing ten Jews. It was made in the spring of 1941 by local government officials on Nazi orders. 

When the Nazis randomly rounded up 427 Jewish men in February of 1941 in Amsterdam and transported them to Mauthausen concentration camp, it became clear to everyone that the lives of Jews were in danger. 

After moving his family from their native Frankfurt in 1933 to a more tolerant Amsterdam after the Nazis gained power, Otto Frank, Anne's father, ran a successful business called Opekta, selling spices and pectin to make jelly, from the office overlooking the Prinsengracht canal. When conditions proved to be intolerable, his courageous secretary, Miep Gries, and two others kept his business going and also helped the Franks and four others living in the Secret Annex at the back of the building.

The diagram showed the office in the red and the Secret Annex in the blue accessed by the bookcase. Though the annex wasn't exactly a secret as it was hard to hide an entire building, it was a common feature in Amsterdam buildings. As such, the Nazis had no cause to suspect anything on the premises of the Opekta business. 

The eight inhabitants of the Secret Annex included initially just the four members of the Frank family: Otto and his wife, Edith, their daughters, 16-year-old Margot and 11-year-old Anne. A week later they were joined by the Van Pels - called the 'Van Daans' in her diary - and their teenage son, Peter. A few months later, Fritz Pfeffer - called Mr. Dussel in the diary - was asked to join the others.

The stairway led up to the second floor Storeroom where spices were once kept.

The image of the storeroom showed the back windows were painted to protect the spices from the sunlight.

The day after Anne's older sister, Margot, received an official notification to report to work in Nazi Germany on July 5, 1942, the family went into hiding as Otto felt the family had no other options. The family spread rumors they were fleeing to Switzerland. They sent this postcard the same day to their family in Basel, Switzerland, writing the family was healthy and together, although it was clear reading between the lines that something was terribly amiss. 

The swinging bookcase, filled with business files, hid the secret entrance to Anne's parents' bedroom.

Margot on the left and Anne:

After the eight people in hiding were arrested, the Secret Annex was emptied on the orders of the Nazis. All that remained were the family photos and a few personal items. This reconstructed room had belonged to Anne's parents and sister. The family carried on their lives as normally as possible here. Edith read her prayer book in her native German, the children continued their studies, and they all tracked the war's progress by radio broadcasts and news from their helpers. 

Anne's room, which she initially shared with her sister and then with Fritz, a middle aged dentist, was covered with pictures from magazines that were smuggled to her by the Opekta bookkeeper. The images vividly brought to life the pre-teen Anne - they made me think right away of our own children's rooms which at one time also had photos of their idols. We could imagine Anne spending many hours sitting at a desk just like this one writing in her diary.

Pictures pasted on the wall included the future Queen Elizabeth as a child, matinee idol Rudy Vallee, actresses Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers, American star Robert Stack and so many others. Photos of flowers and landscapes reminded Anne of the world outside she was forbidden to see.

All eight people shared this one bathroom; during the day, no one could flush the toilet as the drainpipe ran straight downstairs and right through the warehouse, and the noise could have betrayed the people in hiding. 

Another steep staircase took us to the Common Living Room which was used as the kitchen and dining room during the day and the Van Pels' sleeping quarters at night. We saw the remains of the stove in the photo below. Miep Gies would take their shopping list and buy food for her 'family of eight' and secretly bring it up to them. As you can imagine, buying such large quantities of food in a coupon-restricted economy would have raised suspicions, except she knew a sympathetic grocer a block away on Leliegracht where we'd just walked. Gries and the grocer were part of a group of Amsterdammers who risked their lives to assist the Jews who'd comprised ten percent of the population when the Nazis invaded. 

The menu for a special dinner that listed soup, roast beef, salad, potatoes, rice, dessert and coffee could only have come from near the beginning of their hiding as later, worsening conditions and German restrictions thrust the country into poverty and famine. 

The photo was a reconstruction of what Peter van Pels' room looked like when they were in hiding. After two years in hiding, he and Anne developed a courtship and their flirtation ended in a kiss! 

On February 23, 1944, Anne wrote she went up to the attic "almost every morning to get the stale air out of my lungs. This morning when I went there, Peter was busy cleaning up. The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew ...." The chestnut tree she referred to in the back yard fell down in 1970 after a bad storm.

We couldn't go up the staircase from Peter's room which led to where the residents stored their food. It was also where Anne liked to escape for some privacy. Otto was teaching Peter English in his room when they looked up and saw a guard with a gun on August 4, 1944. Their hiding was over.

It was very distressing reading Otto Frank's words:"After the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, we believed we'd soon be liberated. So the shock was even greater when the Gestapo unexpectedly forced their way into our hiding place on 4 August and arrested us."

A Jewish filmmaker and prisoner at Westerbork transit camp north of Amsterdam was ordered to make the 'Westerbork film' that carefully recorded the departure of transport trains. On September 3, 1944, the eight people who had hidden in the Secret Annex were deported in the last transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. In 1968, Frank recounted "During that terrible journey - three days in a closed cattle truck - I was with my family for the last time."

On the platform at Auschwitz, Otto later recounted how they were "forcibly separated from each other" and sent to different camps. Anne and Margot ended up at Bergen-Belsen.

How profoundly sad it was to watch interviews of Anne's childhood friends from Amsterdam who by chance had also ended up at Bergen-Belsen with Anne. The first recounted in English how she and Anne were able to talk through a fence. Though the second was able to help Anne and Margot scrounge for food, the sisters both died of typhus in March of 1945 just months before the camp was liberated. The other residents of the Secret Annex with the exception of Otto were all gassed or died of disease. 

After Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians in early 1945, Otto, one of the 7,000 survivors, returned to Amsterdam looking for his wife and daughters and posted notices in local papers asking for any information. I could feel Frank's pain when he wrote on July 7, 1945, "I still hope to find my children and that is all I live for. I waver between hope and fear." On the way, he learned that his wife had died and then discovered from two sisters in Amsterdam that had also been imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen that Anne and Margot had died. 

The Nazis ordered that all Jews in the Netherlands be registered during the occupation. These were the registration cards for the eight people who hid in the Secret Annex and came from the records of the Jewish Council. After the war, the Red Cross used the same cards and added information such as deportation date, a date of death, and, for Otto Frank: "Returned!" 

How heartbreaking to read that of the 135,000 Jews that thrived in the Netherlands before the German invasion, 104,000 were killed in Nazi extermination camps. (The numbers change depending on the sources.) 

The Memorial Book listed the names of 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. It was important to remember those who died and that their memory lives on and that the sad story of the Anne Frank House may never be forgotten.

This photo, taken in October of 1945, showed Frank in the center with four of the helpers who risked their lives to assist the eight people in the Secret Annex for over two years. What a relief to find out that all the helpers who had risked their lives to aid the Franks and the others in the Secret Annex also survived. 

Anne's Diaries: There were two versions of Anne's diaries; the first version was written in the red checked notebook she was given for her thirteenth birthday just before the family went into hiding, and two written in school exercise books. They spanned the time from June 13, 1942 to August 1, 1944, but all of 1943 was missing. The second version, comprised of 215 loose sheets of paper, was her rewritten diary which she started in 1944 with the plan to publish a book after the war. Anne wrote the diaries in the form of a letter to an imaginary friend named Kitty. 

On the left was a letter in her diary dated June 19, 1942, just three weeks before the family went into hiding. Her last entry was August 1, 1944, three days before everyone on the Secret Annex was captured. 

The diaries were an important release for Anne's feelings as it allowed her to record all her thoughts and fantasies. Otherwise, she wrote "I'd suffocate."

Excerpts from Anne's diary from February, 1944: "The sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I'm longing - so longing - for everything ... to talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone."

The helpers brought school books and ordered language and shorthand correspondence courses for Anne, Margot and Peter. Fritz, the dentist, learned Spanish while in hiding as he wanted to start a stud farm in Chile after the war ended. While in the Secret Annex, Anne read lots of books, and, on her father's advice, she compiled interesting sentences into a notebook and called it her 'Book of Beautiful Sentences.' 

Anne also wrote short stories in this story book - some were fictitious, others were about specific events in the Secret Annex. 

The Dutch government who had spent the war in exile, asked their countrymen to give them records of their lives during the war. One of the helpers had found the diaries after the arrests, saved them and later gave them to Otto when he returned to Amsterdam after the war. Anne's diaries were published in 1947 and then translated in over 70 languages. 

Her legacy: Anne and her diary inspired many authors, visual artists and composers. Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned by South Africa's brutal apartheid regime from 1964-1990, was quoted as saying that "some of us read Anne Frank's diary on Robben Island and derived much encouragement from it." I thought Shimon Peres, the Israeli President who visited the Anne Frank House in 2014, spoke with great wisdom when he wrote "It's not a memory, it's a warning to all of us." 

In a similar vein, someone wrote "We don't like to think this can happen again, but it can happen again." An American writer wrote how he wondered as a Jewish child who would hide him and other Jewish kids if a second Holocaust came. With all the violence against Jews in this country especially the last couple of years, I am sure that has become an all too common thought of late. 

Marc Chagall made this lithograph for a special French edition of Anne Frank's diary in 1958. 

After Shelly Winters won the Oscar for her role as Mrs. Van Daan (Van Pels) in the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank, she donated it to Anne Frank House. 

Something that strongly resonated with me was this comment: "All her would haves are our possibilities." I'll finish this post about our two plus hour visit to the Anne Frank House with Otto's words: "The diary touched people no matter what country. One doesn't need to be a great hero to change the world."

Next post: We visited the Dutch Resistance Museum later that day. Writing more about that tragic time in the Netherlands' history will have to wait until then.

Posted on July 8th, 2019, from our home in Littleton, Colorado.