We woke up in Rotterdam about 4:45 am local time on July 25, very happy to have slept as long as we did after our long travel day.

If you read my post on planning this trip, you know that getting tickets to the Anne Frank House was a significant endeavor fraught with illness, time change, international credit card fraud and persistence.  Okay, that is exaggerating a bit, but all aspects are somewhat true. Today was Anne Frank Day.

We had breakfast at the hotel and engaged an Uber to the train station. 

There were so many bicycles parked outside the station.  Bicycles are the prime mode of transportation in the Netherlands and seem to have right of way over everything.

The station uses a tap-on tap-off system like we have experienced before.  Of course, we generally have no idea how much we will be charged for these European mass transit activities, but it is never very much. 

We had a general idea of where to go from the helpful desk agent at the hotel.  We tried to look at the information boards for confirmation and understanding.  However, for a country in which everyone seems to speak some amount of English (thank you very much) there is almost no signage in English.  

We did recognize these!

We had to pay, again by credit card, to use the water closets. The funny thing was that women paid .5 Euros and men paid .9 Euros. Would that relate to which had to be cleaned more often?

The trains were electric and very quiet. The platforms were clean.

We were pretty confident we were in the right place.

We boarded and sat down to enjoy our ride to Amsterdam.  We were talking quietly when were shushed and told that we were in the silent car.  The woman pointed to the notice below the window.

We were novices and happy to learn – also very happy to accidentally be in a silent car. We had 75 minutes of silence to Amsterdam Central.  The trains interior was very clean.

These fields were for flowers, but past their season.

Again, although everyone we had interacted with for the last 24 hours spoke some English, the announcements on the train were only in Dutch.

Upon exiting the train, we followed the crowd out of Amsterdam Central, remembering to tap out. (We later learned that our tickets were the equivalent of $22 USD each.) 

Looking at Maps on our phones, we decided we would walk to the Anne Frank House.

A few things looked familiar from when we were in Amsterdam 18 months ago.  Northern Lights Cruise: Amsterdam is the link.

Today was the day to absorb what happened right here in Amsterdam during the Holocaust.

There were between 25,000 and  27,000 Jews in hiding in the Netherlands,  1/3 of whom were eventually betrayed.  Families were often separated while in hiding as it was less of a burden on the people providing shelter to care for one or two people rather than an entire family. 

These are pictures we took from outside. No photography was allowed inside.

We had timed entrance and then followed a tight queue throughout the building.  We saw the offices where the “helpers” worked. The helpers were four employees of Otto Frank who assisted those hiding by providing food and other essentials. Since we had both recently read books about the betrayal of Anne Frank, all of the names and events were familiar.

The place was different than I expected in that all the rooms were so compact.  That should have been obvious given the narrowness of the building.  We went up several flights of steep narrow stairs, with one or two rooms for offices on each floor.

This picture is of the bookcase that hid the opening to the stairs going up to the secret annex.  This picture is from the website and is exactly what we experienced.  The bookshelf is original but is encased.

Once in the annex, Randy noticed how squeaky the floors were.  That was just a reminder of how quiet the eight people in the annex would need to have been during the day.  There were four in the Frank family, three in the Van Pel family and Fritz Pfeffer.

We were able to walk through each of the annex rooms including one for Mr and Mrs Van Pel that also served as a communal room.  There was a bedroom for Mr and Mrs Frank and older daughter Margot, and another for Anne Frank and Fritz Pfeffer.  Anne’s side of the room was decorated with magazine clippings and photographs.  The only room we did not see was Peter Van Pel’s room in the attic, accessible only by ladder.  

Where the office rooms had been smaller than I expected, these rooms seemed larger.   However, I do not doubt that they felt very small to the eight people trapped in them for over two years.  There was very little natural light.

The occupants of the secret annex were betrayed and captured in August 1944.  They were on the last transfer to Auschwitz.  Anne and her sister were transferred to Bergen-Belsen and died in February or March 1945, just weeks before the end of the war.  

They were so, so close to making it through.  The only one of the eight to survive was Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

Before we left the museum we had an opportunity to see Anne’s diary and other pages she had written on when the diary was full.   Her writings started as her way to express her feelings about life.  She then decided to re-write and focus on telling what happened during the war so it could be known.  This picture is from the website. We saw the diary opened with her writing visible, but just for moments.

Anne wanted to make a difference in the world.  She accomplished that, probably even more so because of her death.

World, do better!

Next up: An Amsterdam Food Tour.