WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2013

Visitors line up
early to purchase
tickets for the Anne
Frank House. They
probably didn’t
know you can get
tickets in advance
online that would
save the waiting in
the rain.
A Poignant Visit to Amsterdam’s
Anne Frank House
By Sharon Whitley Larsen
Recently I was on a Baltic cruise on the Celebrity
Constellation, departing from Amsterdam,
the dynamic city where I planned a few days
of sightseeing. First on my list was to tour
the Anne Frank House. It was in 1942 that a
young Jewish girl received a red-checked diary
for her 13th birthday.
That gift became world-famous, a
powerful World War w document
and one of the most moving firstperson
accounts of Jewish persecution
and Adolf Hitler's terrifying
reign.
I first received a copy of “Anne
Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl”
decades ago when I was in the
sixth grade. And I still have the
torn, yellowed paperback. Millions
have fallen in love with the powerful, intimate writing of this innocent,
ambitious teen. It's hard to believe that Anne would be
84 today had she not died in a concentration camp at age 15.
Anne's diary was mainly written during the two years (1942-
“This visit was just
as powerful as my
first. I felt an overwhelming
sadness...”
1944) that she and her family--parents Otto and Edith, and
older sister Margot--hid in quiet fear in the back section of a
four-story Amsterdam office building with four others.
Miep Gies, a Christian, was among a few trusted office employees
in the building who brought food, books, and news to
the hidden group, trying to boost their spirits. And, when they
were captured in August 1944 (it’s unknown, to this day, who
turned them in), it was she who discovered
Anne’s diary and scattered
papers left behind. After the war she
presented them to Otto, the only one
of the group to survive. He died in
1980, age 91.
“Here is your daughter Anne’s legacy
to you,” she told him in July 1945.
The following spring, historian Jan
Romein wrote a front page story
about the diary in the Dutch newspaper
Het Parool, noting: “For me, all the hideousness of fascism
is embodied in this apparently insignificant diary of a child,
more than in all the Nuremberg court documents put together.”
The diary was first published in June 1947 as “The Secret
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