Our first afternoon in Amsterdam, my husband, Bob, and I had spent a walking, gawking, somewhat shocking afternoon wandering Amsterdam’s red-light district. We were ready for dinner, a quiet evening recovering from jet lag, and a good night’s sleep to ready ourselves for a two-day cultural blitz.

The legendary museums of Amsterdam provide ample opportunity to ponder something more cerebral than pot. The must-see museum on my list was the Anne Frank Huis. To avoid three block long lines or the disappointment of being turned away, we had ordered tickets for the Anne Frank Museum before leaving California.

The Anne Frank Huis Museum

I had read the book, Diary of a Young Girl, in high school English class. By the last pages I had bonded with Anne and was in tears, devastated that there would be no reprieve. Everything wouldn’t be okay in the end. The book haunted me for days, stayed with me ever since.

 I reread Anne’s Diary on the flight to Amsterdam, and was no less saddened, although this time I viewed the tragedy from the perspective of a mother, sickened by the monstrous evil that cut short Anne’s promising young life.

Photos were not allowed inside the museum.

When our ticket time was called, we joined the throng of visitors winding through the hidden annex, a secret apartment above the factory where Anne's father, Otto Frank, had worked before the War. The story is told through posted quotes from Anne's diary. There are short films that put the events in historical perspective.
The rooms of the secret annex are hauntingly devoid of furnishings. After the occupants were arrested, the furniture was hauled away. The few salvaged personal belongings of the eight people who hid there, along with some of their papers are on display. Otto Frank’s office in the front part of the building has been refurnished in the style of period.

The press of people surrounding us remained silent, respectful. Each of us wrestling with our thoughts. I remembered something Maya Angelou said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” I looked at the damp cheeks of a woman behind me. The man at her side shook his head. The expressions around me ranged from grave to pensive to resolved, like we were collectively thinking this can never be allowed to happen again.

In the 1940s, while madness stalked Amsterdam and the rest of Europe, Annelies Marie Frank remained an optimist. At thirteen, she went into hiding, but continued to dream of being a famous author, of marrying, of having children. She hung pictures of movie stars on the wall above her bed.

Anne took a diary that she named Kitty into the family’s concealed quarters. She poured her heart onto blank pages that she believed understood her better than any living being. In the end Kitty told the world Anne's story. The book, translated into 50 languages, has sold 31 million copies and made Anne, posthumously, one of the most read authors of all time.

The Anne Frank House (Huis) Museum is a somber and compelling journey–a coming of age story set against unimaginable horror, yet oddly juxtaposed on mundane, ordinary details of daily life: petty bickering, boredom, and issues of how to divide food, bathroom time and desk space among eight people. Eight people who knew Jews were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Every unfamiliar sound from the factory below struck fear as they huddled and waited, hoping to survive until Hitler was defeated and sanity restored.

Anne’s spirit was irrepressible and even though I dreaded the end of the story, as we entered the last room, the room that contained Anne’s diary, I was still cheering for the young girl who believed in the innate goodness of the human race. But the ending hadn't changed: After two years in hiding, the frightening sound from downstairs was not another false alarm. The Franks had been betrayed. The Gestapo had come for them. Anne and her sister, Margot, died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March of 1945, less than two months before the allies liberated the camp. Anne was fifteen.

Signing the Museum’s guest register I thought of the brouhaha caused by nineteen-year-old Justin Bieber when he visited the Anne Frank House and penned his thoughts into the register: Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully, she would have been a belieber. (The name given to Bieber fans.)

Those comments created an uproar with columnists who labeled the baby-faced Bieber shallow, arrogant, narcissistic, self-centered, and disrespectful. Those were the kinder comments. He may be all of those things, but at least he came.

There’s a huge dose of egotism in his words. He is a teenager whose frontal lobe and impulse control center were six years shy of full development at the time he said it.

The movie star posters, the dreams, the angst Anne Frank poured into Kitty, all show how much she wanted to be a regular teenager. The world will remember Anne Frank long after Justin Bieber’s fame has faded. Still, if she and Justin Bieber had lived at the same time in a different reality she might have been one of his 10,000,000 beliebers. Part of being a teenage girl is having crushes on pop stars. I wish she’d been able to indulge in such frivolous, ordinary behavior.

A street honoring Anne Frank.

The Anne Frank Huis, at Prinsengracht 267, would get a five star rating among my travel experiences. The museum is open seven days, mid-September through mid-March 9:00AM to 7:00PM (Saturday until 9:00 PM), Mid-March through Mid-September, daily from 9:00 to 9:00, (Saturdays until 10:00) Last admission is thirty minutes prior to closing.. Adult admission is 9 Euros, age 10-17 is 4.50 Euros, and under age 9 is free.