We walked through the part of Amsterdam called the Jewish Quarter today and learned about the lives of the Jewish people in the Netherlands during WWII. It’s so sad to hear how horrible people were treated and what happened.
At the end of the walk we arrived at the Holocaust Memorial. We walked through a maze of bricks, each naming a Jewish person who were victims of the holocaust (this picture is a just a portion of the maze). The entire maze has names of 102,000 known Dutch people who were taken, died and never had a grave. The enlarged brick is Anne Frank’s name, showing her date of birth and age at death – 15 years.
Afterwards we toured the house where Anne, her family and five other people hid from the Nazis for more than two years. They lived in extremely tight quarters (this is a picture of the bedroom Anne shared), couldn’t go out, not even look out a window, make any noise or turn on lights for fear they would found and had to rely on a few trusted people to bring them food and other supplies.
Just a few days before liberation in Amsterdam, they were found out (perhaps someone reported them, no one knew) and they were all captured and transported to concentration camps. Anne’s father was the only one who survived. When her father found her diary he decided to publish it to fulfill her dream of being an author.
All so sad that such things happen in the world.
Well Behaved Kids Travel 