Anne Frank Lives

On July 9, 2017 I visited the house and secret annex where Anne Frank lived for two years with her family and where she wrote the majority of her diary which was later published first as The Secret Annex and later as The Diary of Anne Frank.  This is a short reflection I wrote immediately after my time there.  

It's hard to know where to begin with this reflection.  It was incredibly heavy to be in the actual space where Anne Frank lived and wrote her diary.  I could feel the fear and tension still present in that space, but I could also hear the laughter of those rare moments of joy.  

I first read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a bit younger than Anne, and it had a profound impact on my life.  I loved Anne.  I saw myself in Anne as an aspiring writer who also kept a journal, had an older sister, was going through puberty, etc.  Seeing myself in Anne made me question - "Why would anyone want to kill her?  Just because she's Jewish?"  That was absurd and unconscionable.  I read many more books on the Holocaust after that, trying to understand, trying to learn.  

The challenge Anne presents me with is if I would risk my own life to save others?  What am I really willing to risk?  If they start rounding up Muslims tomorrow would I do all I could to save as many as I could?  Because they are human beings - with hopes, and fear, and dreams just like me, just like you.  Can you see yourself in those targeted by oppression today?  Maybe with more empathy things would be different... 

At the bookstore in the museum I bought a postcard of Anne at a desk writing.  I will add this image to my prayer altar at home, as a reminder and a motivator to keep doing the work.  

As I sit here and write this, people are passing by on the street, smiling and laughing.  The sun is shining.  They have not just had the same experience I did.  Do they not know what happened here?  That's what I want to shout at them.  "Do you not know!?"  How can you laugh and smile?  Do you not know the tragedy that happened?  

And then I am immediately transported to all these places of tragedy, all these spaces where life has been lost and people pass by unaware.  Those who knew, those who still mourn, they must want to scream at those of us who pass by, "Do you not know what happened here!?"  And we don't.  Or we do and then we forget.  Or it is hidden.  

How do the living honor the dead, remember the tragedy, share the stories, and keep living in the present in such a way that this same tragedy never happens again?  

Front of the House where
Anne Frank and her family hid.

Sign reads: Anne Frank House