Traveltizers
Dutch for a Day By Andrea Gross
The day is sunny, the weather a bit chilly but still pleasant. I shade my eyes and look up at a row of four-story brick buildings fronted by a small patch of green grass. The buildings themselves are rather plain; each floor appears to contain two apartments. Here, in Amsterdam’s Rivierenbuurt neighborhood, a 30minute tram ride from downtown, I can see how ordinary people go about their daily lives, oblivious to the touristy hubbub of the central city. It’s the sort of place I might live had I been born Dutch. It’s also the place where 75 years ago this month — in June 1942 — an ordinary young girl celebrated her 13th birthday. Her favorite present was a small autograph book that her father had purchased at the corner bookstore.
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June 2017
The Riviernbuurt neighborhood, where Anne Frank and her family lived before going into hiding, is a middle-class neighborhood of small shops and wide streets. Less than a month later this girl, whose name was Anne Frank, and her family were forced into hiding to
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A statue of Anne Frank stands in the small park near the apartment building where she lived as a child.
escape the Nazi onslaught. For Anne the ordinary pursuits of childhood came to an abrupt end.
No more playing marbles with her friends. No more jumping rope in the summer and ice skating in the winter. Cut off from schoolmates who would have filled her autograph book with best wishes and witty sayings, Anne used her birthday present as a diary, one that has been translated into 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. A small child comes over and touches my hand. “You lost?” she asks in halting English. “I’m looking for Anne Frank’s house,” I say. She points to a window on third floor of one of the buildings. “That’s where Anna lived when she was little.” The Franks’ apartment, where they lived from 1934, when they emigrated from Germany, until 1942, when they went into hiding, now serves as a
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