Anne Frank House

While in Warsaw, I read that Auschwitz was near Krakow and I thought I should do some sort of thinking or research prior to visiting there. What I did was buy a copy of Anne Frank's diary and started reading it there.

After seeing Auschwitz, I was done with 'holocaust tourism' but as I bought the book I forced myself to finish it anyway.

As it turns out the book is not what I expected. The book was far more about the inner thoughts and feelings about a mature and maturing girl, her relationship with her father, her mother, her sister, another woman and her feelings about boys. The book is very interesting for me as it is the only book I can recall reading (I don't rember too much about the Judy Blume books anymore) that dealt so intensely regarding the relationship between women, their mothers and other women.

What I had expected was that the book would be about suffering and fear of Jews during the holocaust.

So when I got to Amsterdam I visited the Ann Frank Haus which has preserved the house that Ann Frank and her family had stayed in.

It was like walking into the book: They use quotes from the book throughout each of the rooms and also have computer terminals where practically every line from the book seems cross referenced. They also have a very useful 3d representation of the house which makes it easier to visualize their hiding place in reference to the rest of the house.

What I did not appreciate about the display is that they had biased the presentation to be about the holocaust and had marginalized the core of the book: Ann Frank's relationships and feelings with those close to her.

For example, in Anne Frank's diary she states things like that she could never love her mother, that she would never love her mother and that her mother does not behave as Anne would behave if she was to be a good mother! Anne mentions one interaction where her mother wants to read prayers with Anne, but Anne refuses to read her prayers with her mother even though she knows this will hurt her mother deeply - but Anne does not want to pretend that she loves her mother. These are pretty serious things to be thinking and writing, so in the Museum where the show a video clip of Otto Frank saying that after he read the diary for the first time that: "I was surprised at the seriousness and depth of her feelings" I interpret this to refer to her feelings towards her mother. However the way this is presented in the museum is that Otto's quote has something to do with Anne's feelings about the holocaust!

I discussed this with an Israeli girl I met in the hostel that night. Her point was that the purpose of the museum was to educate about the holocaust and not Anne Frank.

Anyway both the museum and the book are very good in their own -different- ways.