From The Hague

   This morning I faced the monumental task of getting my luggage down 4 flights of very narrow, very steep stairs from the attic to the ground floor of the VRBO in which I stayed in Amsterdam. I succeeded without breaking a leg, arm, my neck, or my ass, so I felt quite accomplished, ate breakfast next door at the little brasserie and UBERed to Amsterdam Centraal for my train to The Hague.

I was quite early but found that my ticket was good for any train headed to The Hague, so I boarded, switched at the airport, and had a smooth uneventful train trip to the Hague. Where I am staying in the Hague is an aparthotel that is literally multiple steps down from my attic accommodations in Amsterdam as I am on the ground floor, but since it has a small kitchen, table, private toilet and shower, and a separate bedroom, it is quite a step up for me. I have dubbed it the James Bond Suite since, you guessed it, I am in apartment 007. I have not really gotten a feel for The Hague yet as I only arrived a few hours ago and so far my only sojourn has been to a little cafe for a mid-afternoon health food snack of apple pie with whipped cream and coffee. (Addendum: I took a dinner break from updating and had a delicious Italian dinner at a nearby restaurant called Impero Romano).

   Yesterday could be called Anne Frank Day for me. I had a reservation for a guided walking tour of the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam that ended at the Anne Frank House Museum. Our guide was Ronald and he was knowledgeable and well informed. Our tour began at the Jewish Museum which I had toured the day prior and wound its way through what was the Jewish Quarter. Along the way we encountered stumbling stones, small square metal plates at the site of what had been homes owned by Jews prior to World War II. Those homes are all gone now. When the Nazis invaded and conquered The Netherlands, it was not long before Jews were forced into a ghetto and then transported to death camps. Some families, like the Franks, went into hiding. The houses left behind by the Jews were occupied by others and in some cases completely gutted by Dutch people who faced extremely harsh conditions under German occupation, especially in the winter of 1944-1945 where millions faced famine and death. The former homes of the Jews were demolished after the war and new modern buildings went up in their place, but the stumble stones have been imbedded into the sidewalk where the homes used to be. The names of the household are on the stumble stones, one person per stone. Their name, date of birth, and date and location of their murders is on the stone. Rarely, you may see the name of one who survived the war either by hiding or by surviving the death camps. They are referred to as stumbling stones because they are slightly raised above the level of the sidewalk. If you "stumble" on one, you are forced to look down to see what caused the stumble and this is what you see.

   We next went to the National Holocaust Memorial which is a stunning moving sacred place. The artist used 102,000 bricks to construct walls which, when viewed from above form the Hebrew word remembrance (or maybe reconcile, I don't remember which). The reason for the 102,000 bricks is that out of 130,000 Jews in the Netherlands, 102,000 were murdered by the Nazis. There is a name on each brick and the names are in alphabetical order. Our guide led us to to a brick with the name Annelies Frank. Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt Germany in 1929 and Annelies was her German name. Shortly after the Nazis came to power in Germany, Otto Frank found a home in the Netherlands for his family of four, his wife and two daughters Margot and Annelies and they joined him. Otto believed The Netherlands would be safe for his family because the Netherlands had been neutral in World War I and was neutral in World War II until the German army violated the country's neutrality and conquered The Netherlands. When his older daughter Margot got a call up to report for a "work camp" Otto brought his family to his place of business where his family and four others lived in an annex for over two years until they were betrayed, arrested, discovered, and transported to death camps. Otto was the only member of the Frank family to survive the war. He was a prisoner at Auschwitz when the Russians liberated the camp in 1945. As he made his way back to Amsterdam, he learned that the rest of his family had died in the camps.

   The tour ended at the Anne Frank Museum, for which I had a reservation. I found out prior to leaving that tickets for the tour are sold online on the first Tuesday of the month prior to your planned visit, the first Tuesday in September in my case. I had one of those nights when I woke up after some initial sound sleep and saw that it was past midnight on the first Tuesday in September, so I was able to get my ticket, and I am glad I did. Upon entering the museum it becomes readily apparent that you have entered holy ground. As is appropriate when in a holy place, no photography is allowed. The demeanor of the visitors was somber as we made our way through the rooms where the Franks and four other people hid for over two years. The rooms are bare, but there are photos and scale models of how they looked while the family hid.The final room is the Diary Room where pages from Anne's diaries in her own handwriting are on display. Seeing the actual diary is very emotional. I felt on the verge of tears more than once. Otto Frank took only four people into his confidence about his plans to hide his family. They were four non Jewish employees of his who put their lives at risk to help the eight people who were hiding. One of them, a woman named Miep Gries, was able to go into the house after the arrest of the Franks and retrieve the notes that Anne had been keeping which were eventually published and became one of the most widely read books in the world, The Diary Of Anne Frank. I am sure Anne Frank would be shocked to learn she wrote a best seller that has been translated into multiple languages and read by millions across the world. Each person on the tour received a personal hand held audio device in his or her native language and throughout the tour hardly anyone said anything, and when a person spoke, it was in a very low tone perhaps just above the level of a whisper. (This approach was a marked change from my visit to the Jewish Museum. I was making my way through the museum which is actually four synagogues that have been converted to a museum when the unmistakeable sound of a school field trip invaded the peace and quiet. The students in question appeared to be anywhere from 11-13 years old. Fortunately, by the time the students arrived, I had finished most of my tour so I turned in my audio device, had a light lunch at the cafe, and continued to meander around Amsterdam). By the time I finished the visit to the Anne Frank Museum I felt emotionally drained, but glad that I had visited. If you go to Amsterdam, it is a must see. Last evening I was doing a Facebook update when I heard the chimes of the West Church, to which I was close and which is right next door the Anne Frank Museum, sound the quarter hour. Our guide Ronald told us that the 24/7 chiming was appreciated only by Anne. She felt as long as she could hear the chimes, others could hear them too, and that gave her great hope. Anne Frank died in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. She was 15 years of age when she died. She was buried in a mass grave, so her actual burial site is unknown. (My apologies to those of you who have been following on Facebook I realize there is some repeat information, but not all people who read this blog are on Facebook)

   The story of Anne Frank needs to be told and told and retold. Holocaust deniers need to be confronted with the truth about what the Nazis did to Jews, Gypsies, mentally disabled people, and homosexuals. They may persist in their willful and hateful ignorance, but the story must be told with the fervent hope that such an irrational inhuman barbarous atrocity will not be repeated. As I mentioned above, I heard the chiming of the quarter hour from the West Church as I was posting to Facebook last night and felt a visceral connection to Anne Frank for whom those chimes were her only contact with the outside world. I believe I will never think of church chimes the same way as long as I live.