Dear Commons Community,

On September 3, 1944, Anne Frank and her family were deported from the Westerbork concentration camp to Auschwitz. Of the four members of the Frank family, only Otto Frank survived. But through her diary, Anne became the voice of the one million Jewish children who were murdered in the Holocaust.  There is an incredible museum in Amsterdam dedicated to the Frank family that includes the house in which they hid from Nazis from 1942 through 1944.  We toured the museum this morning and it leaves a pit in your stomach looking  at remains (desk, makeshift kitchen, toilet) of their Secret Annex.   The most poignant was the actual bookcase that provided the entrance to the Annex. The Franks hid in the  Annex for over 2 years, with the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer.  They maintained their secrecy with the help of Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, John and Bep Voskuijl, and Miep and Jan Gies.

Everyone should visit this shrine at least once in their lifetime.

Tony

Otto, Edith, Margot, and Anne Frank

Westerkerk, located footsteps from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, is a 17th-century Protestant church and the largest of its kind in the Netherlands.

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