Amsterdam--Home of Anne Frank's Red-Checked Diary

While walking quietly through The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, I could feel an intense fear building within me as I climbed the narrow, steep stairs to the secret annex, the hiding place--finding the door camouflaged by a moveable bookcase.

I imagined the Nazis patrolling the narrow streets. How terrifying to the eight people hiding in the annex: four members of the Frank family, three members of the VanDaan family, and Albert Dussel.

The Franks fled Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933. They settled in Amsterdam where Mr. Frank started a business. The German army occupied the Netherlands in May, 1940. In July 1942, Anne and her father Otto, mother Edith, and sister Margot went into hiding at the building housing the family business. The other four people joined them later.

Anne had received a diary from her parents on her 13th birthday. She took the red-checked diary with her into hiding. After she filled the diary she continued to keep her writings in other notebooks and on loose sheets of paper.

The eight people hid for two years. A betrayer, identity unknown, informed the German Security Service of their whereabouts. Anne and Margot were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They both died of typhus in February, 1945. Their mother died in Auschwitz. Otto Frank  survived the war, the only one of the eight, and lived to the age of 91, dying in Switzerland in 1980. The remaining four died in Neuengamme and Mauthausen concentration camps and Mrs.VanDaan died while being transported between camps.

Anne's diary was secured by an acquaintance of the family and was given to Otto when he returned to the Netherlands in 1945. He found  a willing Dutch publisher and the Diary was published in Dutch for the first time in 1947. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It was Anne's dream to become a famous writer some day. She was a prolific writer for such a young age. Much of her work is preserved and displayed in the House, along with the original Diary. Her dream came true thanks to her father, but unfortunately she didn't get to live it herself. But unbeknownst to her, she did leave the world with a unique gift. What a brave young woman. It is a privilege to share her words and spend time in her house.

Front Door of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.