#1 Following in Anne Frank's holocaust journey ...

World War 2 with its far reach across Europe & how it effected even my family right down on the Southern tip of Africa reminds me how interconnected we are. 

I first heard of Anne Frank & her diaries when I was studying German in high school & a neighbour lent me an LP box set of records detailing her diary. It was in German & I found it hard going but my maternal grandfather spoke German as one of his home languages - his Father had been born in Germany, now Poland, and his Mother was Dutch.  So we sat together on a weekend after Sunday lunch & we would listen together & grandpa would then give me the gist of the matter as he understood German better than I did. He had served in WW2 as part of the massive South African effort & it was a time frame that brought tears to his eyes, the conflicts of culture, of his heritage. 

I had previously visited some Holocaust sites in Riga & in Warsaw  & the Shoes along the Danube in a Budapest 

I decided to join an Anne Frank & Oskar Schindler specialist tour before Covid postponed it for 3 years.  That part of Europe is ingrained in my DNA & I do not understand the deep connection. I travelled as a single but knowing one of the other ladies from a previous trip.  There were several single travellers because it is not a tour everyone feels the need to do, but those who do, have their reasons.

Our first stop was in Amsterdam, at the unassuming building along a pretty canal. 

The church near the house, Anne wrote about being able to hear the bells & see the tower. 

A statue near the church to Anne Frank 

Repairs on the front of the building during our visit. 

I had passed it some years before on a boat tour & even though this time it was scaffolded it was surreal standing outside & walking along the same streets which held such dark memories within living memory for some people. 

The sunshine & pretty gabled homes made it even more surreal.  I knew from her diaries that I have read several times with my students too, that she could hear the church bells & see the pretty church tower, that voices could be heard from the street, the tree in the garden - it was all familiar through her stories of the 25 months they spent in the Secret Annex. 

From there we traced their journey once captured to Westerbork Concentration Camp (still in Holland) where they were separated in to a secure space because they had been in hiding. The camp Commandants house is preserved under a glass cover, with perfect views over the train tracks & camp - the trains left regularly & an electronic board now tells of the number of people on board, their destination & the dates. A sobering reminder of the use as a transit camp. 

Transport trains arrived at Westerbork every Tuesday from July 1942 to September 1944; an estimated 97,776 Jews, Sinti and Roma were deported during the period. Jewish, Sinti and Roma inmates were deported in waves to Auschwitz concentration camp (65 train-loads totaling 60,330 people), Sobibór (19 train-loads; 34,313 people), Theresienstadt ghetto and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (9 train-loads; 4,894 people).^[3][1] Almost all of the 94,643 persons deported to Auschwitz and Sobibór in German-occupied Poland were killed upon arrival.

From there her story continues in Auschwitz but that part of the story came later for us because Anne's journey doubled back from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen where she died.  

How bleak Bergen Belsen looked on our October morning, the sun barely warming the vast area. 

There was a real sense of despair & sadness in this vast area & the 3 ladies I was with & I retreated to the quiet chapel space along the wooded edge to gather our thoughts & selves - it is overwhelming to be moved to  silence in this place of evil.  

In this space, people had left stones with messages & we sat on the chairs & just gathered our thoughts. The weight of history is heavy at Bergen Belsen & you cannot escape the depth of the deeds that permeated this space. 

I was unprepared for the size of it & the huge brick edged burial mounds - the details given as a date & number in each mound of mass burials. Margot & Anne, the Frank sisters, like some others, have a memorial stone but their remains are contained in one of the mounds, which one is unknown.  

     

Stones last longer than flowers, the Jewish tradition of leaving a stone to show you have been is evident on the memorials here, people moved to marking that they had come & paid respects ... 

Nothing can prepare you for the sight of these vast burial mounds that had been pits dug to contain the huge numbers of dead. After the war, they were edged with bricks to contain them & the numbers were added to each one. There is a real sense of despair here in this space,  of history needing to be told, of death & suffering ... 

  

The excellent museum at the entrance gives much background to the Holocaust & to the life of Anne Frank, glimpses in to the life of an early Anne doing ordinary things with her friends. 

After the intensity of Westerbork, we had a welcome lunch stop in Celle. It is a pretty traditional town & we could regroup & chat amongst ourselves. 

We then travelled on to Berlin, a city I have visited 3 times previously. It is a part of the war journey I had done previously but the Holocaust is so intense that you do not take it all in each time & each time I gain something new from this amazing city. 

The story of the Nazi’s echoes across Berlin. 

I had previously visited the large stone memorial - Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin - their solid shapes set on undulating paths, which gave you the feeling of helplessness, of not seeing the whole picture, of being part of something much larger.  This time, being early morning,  our guide set us off to go alone in to this vast concrete space, to have ten minutes with our thoughts, to move about it as we wanted to & then to gather again & share our thoughts. It was interesting how everyone described the experience - some saying overwhelming, others lost, some intimidated by the tomb like structures that tower over one. It is an interesting memorial that does not tell you what to think or feel, it is open to interpretation   ....  

The new Topography of Terror museum is set along part of the Berlin wall. While setting it up, they uncovered interrogation cells along the wall that had been used by the SS during WW2. The information boards tell the story of how the war impacted so many communities across Berlin. Definitely worth the time there & it also has a very nice coffee shop where we could meet together at the end again as a group. It was then a short walk to the old railway station where so many were transported from. We passed a bunker that was over 4 floors high & it is now open to the public to gain insight in to the many bunkers that protected the elite. 

    

A short walk from the Topography of Terror exhibition took us to a side street & then to stand on the spot of Hitler's Bunker - now under a carpark. 

 It is fitting that the bunker where Hitler died is merely marked by a board & not preserved at all, it is right not to mark this spot where so much evil was contrived from. 

Standing on the spot was surreal, knowing the history Hitler & Eva Braun. 

There was a palpable sense of walking in dark history along this walk. 

Along the Brandenburg Gate is stone markers in the pavement to show the position of the infamous Berlin Wall that separated the city, the Reichstadt close by & the history there all contributed to how Berlin was the centre of the war.

 Walking along the remaining wall further in the city was a powerful reminder of how quickly events overwhelmed families & how quickly life can change. 

Checkpoint Charlie a visual reminder of the period after the war & how close yet how far the communities were in their divided state. 

More to follow ... 

Dee