Amsterdam, Holland
June 3, 2023
We cleared customs, caught a car to the city, and dropped our bags at the Sir Adam hotel.
Just across the Het Ij from Central Amsterdam, this chic composite of contemporary retro is the coolest hotel our sons have seen. And the most surprising.
Not because of its unique attributes and distinct style (disco elevators, rotary phones, and record player in every room), but because someone with my stubborn instinct for wood paneling, leather bindings, and old world charm selected it.
I admit I was apprehensive when I made the choice. But I’m glad I did. The place is clean, the ambience compelling, the location convenient, and the people nice.
But we aren’t there much. After flying all night, we wanted to keep moving, to mitigate jet lag by staying awake. We took the two minute ferry across the river, and made our way to Prinsengracht Canal.
As we walked, clouds dissipated to reveal the sun. On either side of hydraulic avenues and aquatic alleys, jackets fell from warm backs as colors burst from a buffet of cafés and a banquet of flowers.
But where we were going, the air was heavy and the mood cold. Warmth wilted, and hues disappeared, with everything soaked in sepia, or indelibly doused in black and white.
In the shadow of the Westerkerk, we entered a contemporary structure appended to an older edifice. Thru what was once a warehouse, a few former offices, and series of empty storage rooms, we ascended some stairs.
Atop them was a bookcase, hinged on one side to protect a secret on the other. Rising behind the shelves was another narrow chute of small steps. We climbed carefully, apprehensive about what we’d soon see, while contemplating the circumstances that made this place necessary.
For several centuries, and especially after Holland freed itself from rule by Spain, Jews had found haven in Amsterdam. As throughout the diaspora, this pestered people was renowned and resented for their commercial acumen and financial success.
But for two hundred years, this bustling city was a source and summit of Jewish literature. Dutch Jews adorned Amsterdam with scholars, philosophers, physicians, and poets.
Books and pamphlets proliferated from a litany of Hebrew presses that filled an expanding share of over four hundred printers and publishers that enlivened Amsterdam.
Holland accepted and appreciated these harassed migrants from more inhospitable countries. In the 1670s, Dutch Christians joined Portuguese Jews to dedicate the beautiful synagogue that remains one of this city’s important sites and beautiful sights.
The Hebrew community divided with the arrival of Ashkenazic Jews from Poland and Germany. These immigrants induced antipathy from their Sephardic predecessors, who perceived the newcomers as a Boston Brahmin might view an immigrant from Ireland.
Almost three centuries later, for different reasons (or an extreme version of the same ones) another family followed the footsteps of these German Jews.
When Hitler became chancellor, Otto Frank read the writing on a wall that was quickly closing in. With his wife and daughters he went west, seeking sanctuary in a city renowned for welcoming persecuted people from the rest of Europe.
For several years, he seemed to have made the right decision. But during that decade, thunder rumbled on the eastern frontier.
As skies darkened and clouds descended, Otto Frank again sought more sustainable shelter. He considered fleeing to Switzerland, or taking flight to America. But when the Germans ravaged the low countries on their way to France, the doors slammed shut.
With the Nazis occupying the Netherlands, the Franks would need to take cover in their own country. They weren’t alone. More than 30,000 Dutch Jews went into hiding when the Germans held Holland.
When the occupiers demanded his elder daughter “register” because of her ancestry, Otto told his family it was time to leave.
Without telling his daughter, Anne, where they’d go, he said she needed to be ready and selective with what she decided to bring.
They couldn’t carry luggage without being conspicuous. Under layers of clothing in early July, they wore whatever they wanted to keep. Anything else had to be smuggled in Otto’s pockets, the women’s purses, or plain sight.
Among these items was a diary Otto had given his younger daughter a few weeks before. She later reflected how glad she was she brought it, confiding in its pages that she preferred memories to dresses.
It was thru that book that Anne Frank preserved her sanity by telling their story.
But where would they bring these few prize possessions they could carry on their persons? They had little choice. The borders were sealed. They’d have to hide under the Nazi’s noses.
To do so, the hiders needed helpers. Otto found a few at his place of business, which had a hidden hovel into which the Franks could crawl.
A second family and a single man would accompany their confinement. For two years, eight outcasts were tucked in the tiny rooms of this secret annex, unable to peer outside or make many sounds.
To increase their cover, Johan Voskuijl created the camouflage that bore books. It was he who hinged the shelves that hid the hideout.
Through it, when the offices were closed, a couple heroic women and a few courageous men risked their lives to help eight Jews preserve theirs. It wasn’t easy.
As in many countries, resistors and collaborators co-mingled in the Netherlands.
Voskuijl’s grandson recalled that “after the Nazi invasion in 1940, the Amsterdam police compiled at their request a list of every Jewish-owned business in the city.”
In occupied Holland, the majority of Dutchmen did what most people do when times are tough. They tried to keep their heads down and noses clean. But a forgotten few risked their necks to save other people’s skin.
We’d like to think we’d have been among them. But who knows? In the European city that for centuries had been the most hospitable to Jews, most people weren’t.
There were never more than sixty German officers in Amsterdam at any time during the entire occupation. Nonetheless, more than a half million Dutch collaborated with the Nazis.
Three quarters of Dutch Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the highest rate of any occupied country.
Almost 110,000 Netherland Jews joined Anne Frank in a Nazi camp. Only 5,000 were spared her ultimate fate (Anne’s father was one of them).
But there remained glimmers of humanity amid depths of depravity. After the first mass arrests of Amsterdam’s Jews, many Dutch pushed back. A national strike was called in protest. It was the largest in the history of the Netherlands. But it wasn’t enough.
The yellow stars came next. In them was inscribed the Dutch word for Jew (“Jood”) which wearers converted to a hopeful acronym: “Jews survive the fall of Germany.” Anyone who heard it had to be optimistic. As the joke went, their eventual exodus “was written in the stars.”
Meanwhile, Holland’s Jews hunkered down in these horrible conditions. We were claustrophobic after five minutes passing without fear thru the several rooms in which a couple terrified families spent two years.
From frail fabrics they had to sew curtains so no one could see them. When illness arose they couldn’t see doctors. They had to keep perfectly quiet for hours on end.
Their heroic helpers risked their lives to procure medicine and obtain food. Rationing limited what anyone could buy. Even on the black market, excess purchases risked raised eyebrows and loose lips.
In the annex, terror lengthened days as anxiety shortened sleep. But Anne Frank considered herself lucky. Seclusion was periodically interrupted by news of widespread roundups, mass deportations, and forced sterilization.
At one point, when an elder hideaway was assigned to her room, Anne upbraided him when he began to cry. “We stay cheerful”, she told him. “We must stay cheerful.”
Easier said than done. On the outside, as Anne put it, “women would come home to find their house sealed, and their children gone. Children would come home to find their parents disappeared.”
For two years, those hiding in the annex wondered whether it would happen to them. In early August 1944, it finally did.
The Gestapo burst in, arrested the families, and scattered the members among an assortment of camps. Anne and her sister died at Bergen-Belsen, their mother at Auschwitz.
Of the eight inhabitants of the annex, only Otto Frank survived. Toward the end of our tour, a video recorded his recollection of his family, and brought tears to our eyes.
But how were they discovered? Who gave them up or turned them in?
Among the heroes who helped those in hiding were Elisabeth Voskuil, who risked her life to forage for their food. The woman known as “Bep” by her family and whom Anne called “Elli” in her diary would later name her daughter after its author.
Yet some suspect Bep’s sister wasn’t so kind…or innocent. An ardent advocate of everything German, Nelly Voskuil had Nazi boyfriends and worked for their military.
Her father Johan reputedly beat her after the Gestapo entered the annex, which suggests he blamed her for the Franks’ arrest. But would Nelly have become a rat knowing the jeopardy in which it placed her family (and perhaps herself)?
We don’t know. No one does. It’s one of countless questions buried in millions of graves.
JD