Amsterdam : The Prinsengracht secret hideout

The first place we visited on our morning of arrival in Amsterdam was the Anne Frank House. I booked the tickets online before hand to avoid the massive line outside the House.

There is only a limited number of people allowed in the house because it was really small. Bookings for the afternoon was already sold out and also the one in the evening, so I booked tickets for the morning.

A wax sculpture of Anne Frank in Madame Taussaud Berlin

Who is Anne Frank?
Anne Frank was a Jewish-German little girl who was a victim of the Holocaust. Their family fled from Frankfurt to Amsterdam when the Nazis took over Germany after the elections. What made this girl famous was her personal diary which her father published, years after she was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland which was at that time under the Nazis.

Her diary was published with the title The Diary of a Young Girl and was translated in many other languages. In her diary she describes her life, her feelings and most of what we are curious about, how it was to be a Jew in hiding during the Nazi Rule.

She also wrote about school and how they were treated. All Jews were forced to wear a yellow patch of the Star of David on their clothing. With this, they are not allowed to mix with non-Jews, ride in public transports or have bicycles. Jewish kids are only allowed in Jewish schools.

The Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht 263 was their hiding place, also known as the Secret Annex. Only a small empty section in the building her father was working. Its main door was a bookshelf to hide the lives behind the doors. They lived with four other Jews here and had to be very careful with their daily movements to avoid being found.

Unfortunately, they were betrayed and arrested. Betrayed by whom, we will never know. They were deported to concentration camps and only her father, Otto Frank survived the camp. Anne wanted her diary to be published because she really had a passion for journalism and wanted to become a writer. Her father made it come through, sadly after she died at the age of 15, in Auschwitz.

In the Anne Frank Museum, we got to step into the house that they were hiding in. The high steep staircases, their small rooms and their covered windows to avoid the outside world from finding out. It was a real life museum. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside. But you can see some of them in their website here.

How we all should be grateful for today.