“I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I am free…………”

……. is perhaps the sentence that stood out for me and struck a chord when, as a young girl, I first read Anne Frank’s Diary. It was this sentence that really brought home to me the enormity of Anne’s situation, compared to my own.
I had a lovely childhood – summer days spent playing out with friends, building dens in the fields, riding our bikes recklessly around our village, meeting other friends in the park, camping in the garden on a warm summers night, a delicious home made dinner every night, a warm clean bed, two or three holidays a year and presents under the tree at Christmas, and I didn’t question any of this, it was a given, that is how every child’s life was, surely? We took our freedom for granted so imagine me as a young girl contemplating how what was to be the last couple of years of Anne’s life must have been like, and how her inner strength helped her to cope with such a difficult situation

On her thirteenth birthday, while still living a normal family life, Anne is given a red-checked diary which she takes with her when the family go into hiding, although she revises it and writes much about life in what is to become known as the ‘Secret Annexe’, continuing it on loose sheets of paper when she has filled it, and intending to publish a novel after the War about her time in hiding.

“When I write I can shake off all my cares, my sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived” writes Anne on the 5th April 1944, just months before her and her fellow occupants are found and taken to the death camps
her writing obviously helped her to cope as she found being cooped up extremely difficult, which is understandable – who wouldn’t? And we learn so much about what life must have been like, although no amount of reading can ever allow us to feel just how that group of people must truly have felt
“During the day our curtains can’t be opened, not even an inch!” she writes, and tells us that no noise was allowed during the day incase they were heard, they could hardly move about, nor run water or flush the loo!
As food became more and more difficult for their supporters to get hold of, even on the Black Market, their diet became more and more limited – ” lunch today consisted of mashed potatoes and pickled Kale – you wouldn’t believe how much Kale can stink when it’s a few months old” – we surely don’t know we are born today!

A couple of things in the house I found very touching – the growth lines on the wall, Anne and her sister Margot’s height, pencilled in by their father on the wallpaper and still there to this day was one, and the other was the small pictures cut out of magazines, and postcards that Anne herself stuck on to the wall of the bedroom that she shared with one of the other occupants – so typical of a girl that age, so sad really to see it

Sadly, their hiding place was discovered on 4th August 1944 following an anonymous tip off and all the inhabitants were deported to Westerbork Transit Camp before being taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp
Of the group of eight, only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survives, and returns to Amsterdam on the 3rd June 1945 where one of their helpers, Miep Gies, gives him Anne’s diary and papers that she rescued from the Secret Annexe before it was stripped bare by the Nazi’s
After some hesitation, Otto carries out Anne’s wish that the diary should be published and then he commits the rest of his life to combating discrimination and prejudice, he is quoted as saying “the only thing we can do is learn from the past and to realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means and I believe that it is everyones responsibility to fight prejudice”

Life must have been so painful for this poor man after losing his entire family!
Otto was actively involved in turning the house into a museum, which opened in 1960, and remained so until his death in 1980, also responding to thousands of letters from people who have read Anne’s diary
One of the first things you notice when you enter the building is that the rooms are empty – at the insistence of Otto Frank so that the empty house should symbolise the void left behind by the millions of people who were deported and never returned – and who knows, maybe the void he himself felt following the loss of his own family?

Having read the diary back in the 70’s as a child, I never realised at that time that I would one day get the chance to ‘stand in Anne’s shoes’ as it were, but I am so glad I did
Of all the places in the world that you can cruise to, who would have thought that one of the places that would have the most profound effect on me would be a mere hop across the English Channel! You see, even a mini-cruise can take you to special places so for more information on them please give me a call on 0800 408 6084 and I will be delighted to help you