The Secret Annex

“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion, and love.” ~Anne Frank, 11 April 1944

April 13, 2013 (Continued)The line to get into the Anne Frank house was probably a quarter mile long. Luckily, Andy and Jen were members of the Amsterdam Historical society, so they were able to jump the line to buy tickets for us to get in. All we had to do was wait for them.

While we waited we meandered around taking pictures of canals, bridges, and house boats. We also acted like good tourists and lined up to get pictures with sign that said “Anne Frank Haus.”

When Andy and Jen returned with our tickets, we got to go in for a private meeting with one of the museum curators. She took us into a small classroom that had blown up pictures of the frank family, and large, laminated, photocopies of the original diary pages.

She recapped the story for us. Anne Frank was born the youngest of two girls to Otto and Edith Frank. Originally from Frankfurt, when Hitler came to power, the Frank family relocated to Amsterdam. Otto ran a business making artificial sweeteners and preservatives. In May 1940, the German army began to occupy the Netherlands. Anti-Jewish measures were put into place including specific curfews, shopping hours, transportation limitations, and the infamous yellow stars which were pinned on jackets.

When Anne’s older sister was called up for deportation to a Nazi camp, Otto decided to take his family into hiding. Because Jews were forbidden to own businesses, Otto had sold his company to his Christian partners Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler. While they became the owners on paper, Otto remained the owner in practice. The building their company occupied was four stories high. On the ground level was the warehouse and manufacturing room. On the next level was office space for Otto, his business partner, and their secretaries. The third floor was the storage room, and access to an annex on the fourth floor (which was unoccupied.)

With help from Johannes and Victor, along with their secretaries Miep and Bep, Otto moved his family and their friends (the Van Pels) into the rooms in the secret annex. The annex was comprised of two rooms and a bathroom on the third floor, and two large rooms on the fourth floor (along with room access.) Otto, Edith, and Margot shared a bedroom on the third floor. Anne had the other bedroom (along with Fritz Pfeiffer, a Jewish dentist who later joined the family.) The upper floor was a bedroom for Herman and Auguste Van Pels (which doubled as the kitchen) and a bedroom for their fifteen year old son—Peter Van Pels.

None of the secret annex was visible from street level. During the day, all of the occupants would sit in the kitchen on the fourth floor so that there were two empty floors between them and the works in the warehouse at street level.

Walking through the building was fascinating. We started in the warehouse, which still looks like a large dingy store room. Climbing a very narrow and steep staircase to the second floor, the offices have displays about Johannes, Victor, Miep, and Bep who helped keep the family hidden. They would sneak food, clothing, books, and newspapers to the inhabitants. From all the displays, it was clear that it was a stressful and tenuous job, but that the Franks and the Van Pels were completely reliant on them for everything.

On weekends, the occupants would spread out and use various parts of the building to bathe in privacy. Anne actually used the main office as her bathing room, because the doors could be closed and the curtains drawn. It was also up off the street so she felt like she had more privacy.

Up another steep staircase was the storage room where the spices and supplies were kept. Because the spices were sensitive to light, the room was kept dark and closed off. In this room now is a display with models of the annex.

Down a narrow little hallway is the infamous room. While originally a door hid the annex, the office crew that knew their whereabouts eventually felt that this was unsafe. They decided to construct a hinged bookcase that would hide the entrance. At the end of this narrow hallway was the bookcase.

Photographs were not allowed in any part of the building. There were also signs everywhere that said do not touch. The bookcase is the original bookcase that hid the Frank family and it requires several signs reminding people not to touch it. I have to admit, I was a little bit tempted, but I refrained.

The misconception I had was that behind the bookcase would be a normal doorway into another room. This was not the case. There was an entrance behind the case, but it was VERY small. The annex was not level with the rest of the room, but about 18 inches higher. I had to step up to get into it. At the same time, the doorway was not very big; I had to duck simultaneously to fit through.

Walking through the first floor I was struck by a number of things. It was incredibly tight quarters. It would be plenty of space for one person, or maybe even a young couple. In reality, it was probably about the same size as my dorm room back home. But the fact that three people lived in one room and two in the other was unbelievable.

Climbing to the second floor, I realized how dark the annex was. You read about “blackout curtains” and other devices used to hide towns from areal bombings, but I had no idea how truly “blacked out” they would be. Now even a flicker of sunlight got through to the room.

The entire annex is empty with the exception of a few photos that Anne cut out of some magazines and glued to the walls. Anne had hoped to be a famous writer. Having been given the red and white checkered diary for her thirteenth birthday, she was constantly editing it and rewriting portions. Her hope was to get it published after the war was over.

To this day, it is unknown who made the phone call. After two years of hiding in the back rooms, the Frank family was turned over to the Nazis. Someone called in a tip that a bunch of Jews were hiding in the office building. The building was raided; the Franks, the Van Pels, and Mr. Pfeiffer were all arrested along with Johannes and Victor.

Miep and Bep were left behind. The Nazis took most of the family’s possessions, but in the few things left behind was Anne’s diary. Miep and Bep kept it in hopes of returning it to Anne when the war ended.

Fritz the dentist died within weeks of his arrest in Nuengamme concentration camp. Edith Frank died at Auschwitz death camp. All three of the Van Pels died in gas chambers in various camps across Europe. Margot and Anne were sent to Bergen Belsen, where Margot died of typhus. A few weeks after Margot passed, Anne also died of the same disease. Women who knew her in her final days said “she just lost hope.”

A little less than a month after Anne died, Bergen Belsen was liberated.

Otto Frank actually survived the prison camps. He returned to the annex where Miep and Bep gave him the diary. He was hesitant to publish it but eventually did. The original publication omitted many of the entries (specifically those dealing with a brief romantic relationship Anne had with Peter.) It was eventually released in its entirety (called the B version) and then for a third time with both the edited and unedited passages included (the c version.)

In one of the final rooms of the museum, there was a video interview with Otto. He had been very close to Anne and reading the diary was both a treasure to him and a painful experience. While he enjoyed having Anne’s words to hold onto, they revealed a very different little girl than the one he had known. Despite living together in cramped quarters and being with each other 24/7 for two years, he had no idea the emotions, dreams, or fears that she had. As he put it in the end of the video, “I have come to the conclusion, that most parents do not know really, their children.”

Otto went on to start the Anne Frank foundation which promotes anti-discrimination and racism awareness programs. What surprised me most about the exhibit on the holocaust was the number of people who knew about it when it was going on. I had always been under the impression that when the war ended, the allies were shocked by what they found. Quite the opposite was true. The allies had known it was happening. They’d known it was happening before the war really broke out. It was common knowledge throughout Amsterdam what happened when people went to the camps. British radio shows talked about what happened in the camps. People knew…and no one did anything to stop it!

I took my time walking through the museum, as did most of the group. One of the girls (named Gaby) had recently taken a class on the book and was able to recall the story in greater detail than I could. When we got the end at the gift shop, Andy and Jen met us and were ready to head out to lunch. Once everyone who needed to had hit the WC and we regrouped outside, we headed off to try more Dutch food for lunch.