My apologies for being AWOL. In preparation for a business trip to Amsterdam, I spent super-long days trying to clear my desk of other client work.

You know me, always trying to make everyone feel well-served.

Im still here in Amsterdam having had the time to do precisely one must-do event after a long week of meetings and workshops. I took a cab from my client’s office in the outskirts of Amsterdam (which frankly looked like Queens NY) to the center city to the street where the Anne Frank house stands. It faces a canal admit a street of pretty homes, businesses, and a large Church.

There was a long line, of course, but since I ordered my ticket online I was able to go right in.  There is no formal tour. It’s a self-guided process where you pick up your brochure (several languages to choose from.) The house, as you may remember, was a business office and warehouse. Anne, her family and her neighbor’s family hid in the rooms upstairs. 

Portions of Anne’s diary are quoted on the walls in Dutch and English. Some are printed on glass, others are seemingly engraved on the white, stucco-ish walls. The lighting is subdued. The hushed voices of visitors everywhere. We walk slowly through each room, floor by floor, climbing higher and higher into the upper levels.

The bookcase, built to conceal the Franks’ whereabouts is ajar in front of me. I’m only 5′2″ but I had to bend deep to enter the hidden apartment. Anne’s words follown us along, always within view. There are family photos and identification cards and yellow stars of cloth. A British girl in front of me asked her companions, “How did the Germans know they werwe Jews?” I wanted to answer, “Neighbors were always happy to share, but I decided against it.

The windows are still painted black. Anne’s favorite movie stars still line the walls. There are pencil marks on the wall charting Anne and her sister Margot’s growth while in hiding. And still we climb further until you’re stopped. The final passage up to Anne’s favorite window is blocked by clear plastic. I craned my head to look up. I saw her window, but couldn’t share her view.

At some point you move from Anne’s Attic through an enclosed bridge to a house-like museum behind. More words on the wall, but this time the words are in Anne’s own hand. In loose pages and finally, on a lone table in the middle of the last room is Anne’s original diary. A shrine of a sort, a sacred holy thing.

There are video remembrances of Anne’s father, a girlhood friend of Anne’s who also wound up in Bergen Belsen, Miep, Mr Frank’s office manager who found Anne’s diary and wrtings and kept them safe.  Mr Frank is also interviewed and he shared his surprise at the emotional depth and maturity of his daughter’s writing and her relentless self-criticism. He remarked at the end of his interview that he believes parents rarely understand their children.

I wouldn’t disagree. Anne wrote:

“When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived.”

She had planned to turn her diaries into a novel after the war, The Secret Annex. I wonder how Anne, the adolescent writer, would have matured into Anne, the adult writer. Would her novel be as compelling, her writer’s voice as clear? Would her novel have been yet one more recitation of the Shoah horror, another title in the vast Holocaust genre?

I have no idea. I only know that this adolescent’s diary continues to reach and move people deeply. The Anne Frank House is arguably Amsterdam’s most popular attraction.

I wondered, too, what Anne would have thought about all these people traipsing through her home. Why are they here? she might wonder. What do they want from me?

What do we want from Anne Frank? Who are these people and why am I here, too? Is it her youth, her words, both or something else?

Why is Anne Frank’s diary so special in a genre where hundreds, if not thousands of other title reside?

I’ll leave you to think on that. In the meantime, you may add a virtual leaf onto Anne’s favorite chestnut tree here: Anne Franks’ Garden.