And I don't know if I have words to express how absolutely perfect it was.
(I don't have my journal with me, so this may not go in order of actually happening--room by room--but I want to write about it anyway.)
I was absolutely nervous with excitement as we waiting outside. The weather was nice and cool, the air was crisp, I stood there taking it all in. And as I did, I heard a bell tower begin to toll.
Then I realized where I was--right outside the Anne Frank House. If I looked to my right, I could see the attic window from the street we were on.
These were Anne's bells.
People were around me, but I don't remember much of them, except for my new friends from Missouri who seemed to also understand what these next few moments truly meant.
We get closer to the entry doors, and I'm nearly shaking.
This is real. This is happening.
You can't take pictures inside, but in the little entry room where you get the tickets, I snuck a picture. Not of the inside, but of the street across the canal through the window.
From there, we entered the Anne Frank House establishment. In years since opening the house for the public, they have bought out the houses at the end of the street to also use. (there's a story with this as to why and how, but I don't want to butcher it in a paraphrase. Look it up if you'd like, it's very interesting.)
We walk through the door way to the left and we see the big portraits of Anne, with quotes from her diary.
This room I've seen pictures of.
This room I've day dreamed about seeing, wondering where it was in relation to the house as a whole.
Here I was, in it.
(This I believe was in what was the back of the warehouse. I may be wrong.)
We continued through, and we were given a layout of the house and where we were. When we walked into the bottom floor that was the warehouse, I lost my breath. I honestly can't remember breathing from this point on. The first thing I noticed walking in was the floor. It was a sort of cobble stone, but not in squares like I'm used to seeing. It was in rectangles, and in a sort of pattern that wasn't a pattern. Next I noticed the rafters on the ceiling. There were quotes and things all over the walls, beginning the tale I've felt in my soul since I can remember. As we walked towards the first flight of stairs, I saw the front doors, the ones I knew from pictures on the outside. I got out of line and went up and touched them.
We saw a small scale model of the annex, with mini furniture where it used to be. Normal things, with nothing special about them when originally placed. Secrets and hopeful safety, never intended to be seen and viewed and remembered by thousands. Nothing special becoming specific details in memory.
We walked up the stairs and into the offices. The walls and doors just as I had seen in pictures and virtual tours, the words still on the outside of the door. They had Meip's typewriter and various documents laid out in cases. They had photo albums.
Pictures.
Ones I had seen in small, recreated print. The originals now before me. Small, black and white, just like similar prints I have seen in antique stores or frames in my Grandma's house. Real memories of happy times before the world was flipped upside down.
Which actually happened.
This blows me away.
They also had a drawing of Anne's from when she went to the Montessori school. That was one thing that seemed to strike many of us. We know her words, but to see her art, something she created, in colors, it leaves you speechless.
We continue through and eventually get to the landing in front of the movable bookcase.
My heart is beating like I'm meeting a hero.
My eyes are filled with tears. I hardly remember moving. I just stared, for a long time.
People moved around me.
The side of the bookcase that is the exposed side was covered in a protective plastic, but the front of it wasn't. I was surprised by this.
And there weren't books in the bookshelf, it was files in file folders.
And you could see what was written on them, logs and charts. You could read them if you knew the language. You could see the age and discoloration and dates.
You could touch them.
Most didn't realize this, or think of it. But there was this older lady just as enamored with this as I was.
There we were, vast age gap, both deeply taken by the life of this young girl, her family, and unlikely roommates. So often people think of Anne Frank and her story as one geared solely towards young girls, ones in similar age to what she was when she wrote and subsequently died. They don't think of how Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born the same year. She was just four years older than my own grandma. Age doesn't dictate how someone can relate to a story, or who your own story can relate to.
I used to be afraid that once I got too old I would stop being relevant. Which is kind of funny, considering most people think that you have to be older to be relevant. I was afraid that by getting older I would lose my influence. That once you were older, you were more easily forgotten. That somehow things have more impact when they come from kids. After all, how can you be called an old soul and it mean something if your soul actually resides in a body that is old? But each year, I get older, and each year I realize that the age doesn't matter, it's the life that's lived in however many years you have.
So these files with these dates from the era that so deeply resonates with my old-soul-ed-heart were exposed in these file folders in the very bookcase that hid this girl whose story shakes me to my core and hits that deep spot inside me that I struggle to explain as I'm standing in the very building she hid and lived in for two years and you could touch them.
So I touched them.
I ran my fingers across them.
The paper was thick. Some on letterhead, some hand written in perfect penmanship, never expected to be anything more than just a file, something routine and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Yet here it was, piercing the heart of this 26-year-old old-soul from Texas.
Obviously, these have probably been moved around since the 40s; things changed and switched up. But still.
The map was also exposed, so I reached up and touched the edge as I walked through to the stairs.
I had touched the door handle on the door as we walked in, the same door I've seen in pictures. Some of the wallpaper obviously replaced, but replicated to resemble that which was there 71 years ago.
Directly behind the bookcase door and to the left is a tiny little hallway with a door that lead to the Frank's and Edith's room.
It's small. Hard to believe they fit as much in here as they did, even giving account to the fact the furniture is smaller than we're used to.
On the walls, they have some of Edith's prayer books and some of Margot's Latin courses. Different things that showed life trying to continue as normal. I walked around the room, imagining and taking it all in, marveling that they were so close to the streets where people's normal lives continued as theirs were full of such struggle. I got to the doorway and almost forgot what I had been looking forward to seeing there--the card Otto marked the advancement of the allies and the height chart of the girls.
I was shaken out of my daydream daze when I heard someone say, "Wow, they were tall."
And they were.
At the time of Anne's last measurement, she was about 5'6". I don't know why I expected her to be shorter, but she certainly wasn't. For some reason, this made me feel good. I got out my journal and tried to sketch roughly what their height measurements looked like. Once again, I'm holding up the line.
I went into Anne's room and wrote an entry in my own journal while there. Because of this, my head was down for most of the walk about the room, but since I couldn't take pictures, I feel as though this was important to remember being there. I remember hearing the floors squeak, and thinking of how difficult it must have been to stay quiet during the day. The pictures she pasted on the walls are there, behind a protective plastic casing. The room is small. I'm sure it would feel a little bigger with the furniture they had in there, but still it's hardly big enough for what they had in there.
The teal colored door and window leading to the washroom are there. I touch them. We walk through the door and see the toilet there, marked off, just as it was left. This struck me since it's not something in the virtual tours I've seen. The sink and mirror are also there. When I caught myself in the mirror, my heart lept. This very mirror Anne looked into every day. Where she did some deep thinking. And here, my face is reflected, just as hers was, the only thing separating us is a couple decades.
From there we went back through to the original hallway after the bookcase. We took the stairs up to the next landing, which was the Van Pels' room, as well as what they used as a kitchen. The stairs were narrow and very steep. I had heard this, but was very surprised by it.
The room was larger, but small when compared to what all it was used for. No wonder Mrs. Van Pels made such a fuss when she was used to such different conditions.
At this point, I had caught up with our Tour Director. We walked around, looking at the walls and the different things they had displayed throughout. There was an old stove or something similar to it with a little write out explaining their dietary limitations while hiding. I had to explain to our Tour Director what Kale was, since she had never heard the word before. She was just as taken as I was.
The granite countertop was there, with the sink in the far side. I ran my hand along it, feeling the grooves. I believe it was going through this doorway that I found a piece of wallpaper that looked original. I touched it, letting my hand linger a little longer.
We go into the next room which is where Peter stayed. A landing for the stairs that go up to the attic, hardly big enough to fit a bed into. They had the Attic marked off, but had a mirror angled so you could see more of the details inside. I stared for a long while again, and was holding up the line. I moved to the side and looked up and past where the mirror was to the true wall and the side of a window I could see. As my mind swam in the memories of her diary entries, I was shaken back to the reality of where I was.
The bells.
The very bells Anne wrote about began to toll as I stared into the place where Anne found refuge most during her time there. The bells you would be able to see out the window I could see a part of if I were up in the actual attic. The bells I heard when I was standing on the street, looking to the right at the attic window.
I cried.
But not a sob, boo-hoo cry. More of a gentle weep. The timing couldn't have been planned better if this was a movie script. But it wasn't; this was real life.
From here we went into what I believe is an added part of the museum. We saw and heard and read different things whether it be eyewitness accounts or their cards from when they were captured to different pictures and video footage.
We saw a video testimony from one of Anne's friends who was separated from her by a wall. She had Red Cross aid coming in sporadically and was able to throw Anne a bit of it over the wall. The last time she heard from Anne over this wall, Anne was distraught since her sister had died. The friend mentioned how she wonders if Anne would have survived if she knew her Dad were still alive. She lost hope, and shortly after died, just a month shy of liberation. How different the story would be had she lived.
We continued through, and there was Anne's original diary in a case. I choked up again, and stared, taking it all in as much as I could. Here it was, right in front of me. You could see where she had taped in things onto pages and where parts of the diary were wearing. They had other writings by Anne in other cases throughout the room. What struck me was when I found myself understanding a sentence I was reading in Dutch. It wasn't translate, it was real. And it made the story that much more real to me, that much closer. I saw her brain process and her intentions. I felt like I was with a friend, but more than a friend, because a friend can betray you. This is something different, something better.
I went down from there and signed the guestbook, then saw a section that went more into the life of Mr. Pfeffer. It had a type written letter from Otto, reaching out to Mr. Pfeffer's son, written in English. You could hear Otto's heart coming through the words. It was incredible to read.
I, of course, bought a diary in the gift shop, as well as many post cards and a book detailing the story.
I missed the walking tour we had scheduled, but was okay with it. It was raining by the time I finished. I went to the front door to get a picture with the address and "Anne Frank Huis" plaques by the doors I had touched from the inside.
Later in our trip, we were also able to find the bench from The Fault in Our Stars and 400 Singel, which was a house Anne had lived in prior to hiding. (There was another one we didn't have time to go find, but that's okay.) There's a picture of her on the very stoop we saw that I wished I would have brought to recreate. Regardless, it was neat to see it.
I had somehow missed the Anne Frank statue outside by the church and was pretty bummed about it. But on the last night, my new friend Ashley and I walked to find a post box to mail my post cards in and in doing so, broke away from the rest of the group (who were going out to party and we weren't really feelin' it.) In navigating back to a tram station we knew, I saw the bell tower and recognized it, following it knowing there was a tram station near there. That's when I realized we were by the house, and that meant by the statue. I asked Ashley if she would mind, and she said not at all, that she had wanted to see it as well.
So we went over, at 11pm, streets empty save for the street sweepers, and we took pictures. We took a second to soak in the night around us, realizing the full day aspect of what life was like around them when they were hiding, as well as now knowing a bit of what it was like inside.
As we waited for the tram, we talked about how difficult it must have been to not be allowed on the tram, simply because you were a Jew. How awkward it must have felt, and all for no real reason.
The tram arrived, and just as it did, the bells began to toll again in a serendipitous way. Amsterdam telling us goodbye and that she was happy to know us.
I have a special place in my heart for bell towers.
How incredible is it that one simple, normal life can make such a vast difference in the hearts of so many people?
This is a life well lived.
