(continuing from Part 1)
As for Anne Frank and her diary-writing, the story of the 13-year-old who documented her thoughts and observations in daily diaries from 1942 onwards while hiding in “the secret annex” in what is known today as Anne Frank House, putting her skills of observing things around her and writing them down in the service of recording history, has inspired many people around the world. She wrote about her school reports, her worries about her friends, and what she found out about the going-ons in the outside world. The diaries abruptly stopped when her family was betrayed in August 1944 and eventually sent to Auschwitz death camp; it is estimated that about three-quarters of Jews in the Netherlands did not survive the war.
What this girl – who died before reaching the age of sixteen – left behind in her diaries, letters and other writings, reminds us of what it is like to live in fear of persecution as much as the largeness and resilience of the human spirit.
We marvel at how Anne the letter writer wrote to real-life friends, characters from the books she read, and characters she made up herself (imaginary friends). We love that her diaries are “books of beautiful sentences” as much as they offer a window to first-impression reactions to events, and it is interesting that the British Library has a collection of original diaries including those of Laurie Lee, Kenneth Williams, Alec Guinness, Beryl Bainbridge and Shiva Naipaul in its archives. We wonder at Anne Frank House being a “small museum”, a labour of love, but a small museum that attracts over one million visitors a year, topping the list of visitor favourites (third most popular for Amsterdam).
We are also grateful for her records of the big events during that historical period: for example, she wrote about the bombing of Amsterdam-Noord, still a sensitive topic for Amsterdamers and the most disastrous airstrike the city has experienced, actually done by the Allies on the factory located there that had been confiscated by the Nazis for making aircrafts:
“Amsterdam-Noord was severely bombed last Saturday. The devastation must be terrible; entire streets are in ruins. You hear of children lost in the smoldering ruins searching for their dead parents. I still get shivers just thinking about the dull, droning rumble in the distance.”
She made other interesting observations that were recorded in these books, one of our favourites being:
“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.”
“To study the world and acknowledge it as God’s creation, that is science. To depict the world in all its parts as God’s creation, that is art.” (Franz Liszt)
“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”
“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”
She even pondered on the question of why she wrote and the experience of writing:
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.”
What we found in this city’s most major concert hall, the Concertgebouw, perhaps reflects the city’s international history and outlook and the importance of this spirit that resonate with the Anne Frank spirit too: this is a hall with the names of major composers above the boxes!
What we found also is a city with a City Poet, who wrote about his beloved city and its self-identity this way (we quote from a translated version):
Most beautiful of all, perhaps, is our existing here together for so long. A city of citizens that never grew too large, but blossomed as its own small realm.
A unique combination of canals, bridges and locks, where art, knowledge and religion from all over the world come together.
