When I moved to the Netherlands in 1999, one of the first things I did was visit the Anne Frank House. Years before, when I was in high school, I went through a period where I read a lot of books about the holocaust. I had just learned about it in history class and I couldn’t read enough about it. I read book after book, history books and survivor autobiographies…
The most memorable was The Diary of Anne Frank. The story of a young Jewish girl who goes into hiding with her family during the holocaust. They hide in an attic hidden behind a bookcase and while in there she writes about her life, dreams, fears and frustrations. Until they are betrayed and given up to the Nazis, after which she is sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It’s there that she dies of Typhus seven months later in March 1945.
As a teenage girl in Nova Scotia, I never dreamed that one day I would live in the Netherlands and stand in the same place as this young girl. That I’d climb those same stairs behind the bookcase and stand in the tiny bedroom where she spent all that time dreaming, looking at the same photos of the movie stars she’d stuck the wall.
… or looking out the same window she gazed out of every day at the chestnut tree that now, just over 50 years later, is going to be cut down.
“Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year…” – Anne Frank, 13 May 1944
There has been a lot of commotion made about the cutting down of this tree. Not only because it’s one of the oldest chestnut trees in Amsterdam but because of its historical significance.
This is the tree that Anne wrote about in her diary. One of the only things she could see of the outside world and the only thing of beauty in her life for those years she was in the attic.
Is it just a tree… ? I don’t know, but I once stood in the spot this photo was taken and for just a moment saw what she saw… and it’s something I’ve never forgotten. It’s a shame that soon others won’t be able to do the same.
I know exactly what you mean. It is amazing to stand there and see what she saw… I understand they are cutting it down because it’s “ill”… I hope that is the real reason.
I do hope that they have a VERY good reason to chop it down. I also hope that they can replant it from the saplings that they saved.
I haven’t visited the Anne Frank house. I, too, read the books as a child and never thought I would live in the Netherlands. I haven’t been to the house because it just seems macabre to me to go and see it. Weird, I know.
they cant just restore it?? hmmm….
i think if i read a bunch of holocaust in my youth (or at least in high school) i would have been much more depressed.
It may be “just a tree”-but this tree has so much history tied to it. I would hope they could preserve more than just a few graphs to start a sappling.
Love the new look! :)
When I was in Amsterdam (and Westerbork) I walked around pretending that I was looking at the same things as Anne. I have to admit, though, that I was disappointed when visiting the house. I think I had built it up in my mind for so many years that when I finally got there it was anti-climactic. I have wanted to move to the Netherlands for years (my father is from Tilburg; I was born and live in Canada), but it ain’t gonna happen, so I am living there vicariously through you! Love your site, btw.
That is a very nice post! Good job! I’ve never read Anne Frank, but your comments make me more likely to in the near future. (In my defense, my dissertation focused on the Western democratic response to German expansionism in the 1930s, and I’ve read multiple volumes on German history and Nazi politics of the era. Send me a line if you need any book recommendations!)
That is too bad they are cutting that tree down.
Well lets hope they put a plaque up to remeber it. And maybe they can use the wood to make a statue in her memory.