Anne Frank Huis

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart".

(Ann Frank, July 15, 1944)

My introduction to Anne Frank came when I played Mrs.Van Daan in a our sixth grade production of The Diary of Anne Frank.  It might have been the first time I realized that really bad things happened in the world no matter how young you are.  Years later, I revisited the story when I read Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. It was one of the most heart wrenching books I had ever read.

Today, I visited the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam.  I walked behind the bookcase and into the secret annex.  I stood in her room and saw her decorations on the wall.  I looked at the growth chart where the passing of time and childhood were measured. I looked out the windows to the streets below and saw a much different world than the one that Anne saw when she stood in the same place and peeked out into the night.  And like many around me, I shed a tear.  For what was and for what might have been.

It is one of those places that moves you and by doing so changes you and you leave a little better for having been there.  

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world" (Anne Frank)