There is nothing pretty or quaint about the tall, narrow canal building on the Prinsengracht in which Anne Frank lived for the final two years of her short life. Built in 1635, with the purpose of having direct access to water, it is one of the many mercantile houses flanking the canal front. In 17th-century Amsterdam, raw materials and merchandise were transported along the canals. The house stands two doors down from the Westerkerk, a tall church topped by a golden dome visible throughout central Amsterdam. Anne enjoyed listening to its bells, until they were removed and melted down as part of the Nazi war effort.
Far from a place of romantic refuge from the world, this ordinary house instead represents a daring bid to outwit the certain death facing all Jews in occupied Holland. In ways it was a prison, if a prison of hope: the Franks wanted to survive. And would have, but for the mystery informer who sent them all, with the exception of the father, Otto Frank, to their death. The house was raided on August 4th 1944, and they were all arrested.
For a visitor viewing it now, it is a dark, claustrophobic place, and quite bare. Yet it certainly conveys the sense of having housed a small group, often bored and bickering, passing the slow hours until liberation. For readers of Anne's Diary, it is also extremely familiar.
Here Anne and seven other people lived with blacked-out windows, fearful of even flushing the toilet in case their presence might be detected.
More than most monuments to war, it leaves no doubt as to the true victims - ordinary people who just want to survive. The setting is domestic, meals were cooked and eaten here. The narrow stairs still creak and, as we know from Anne's writings, a strange footstep was a source of terror.
Early in 1942 Otto Frank had sought the assistance of his employees as part of a plan to hide in the annex hidden at the back of the offices from which he conducted his spice and jam business. Otto, his wife and their daughters, Margot and Anne, had left Germany in 1933. At first the move to Amsterdam went well. Anne, who was born in June 1929, was already developing into a lively, candid character.
Anti-Semetic tension destroyed their world and threatened their lives. Race laws were imposed and with it an array of personal humiliations. It was no longer a case of being German or Dutch; being Jewish had become a crime.
Otto Frank decided the family would go into hiding and as a decoy, put out the rumour they had moved to Switzerland. Meanwhile they "disappeared" into this series of darkened rooms, at the rear of a warehouse-like building, the place Anne called the Secret Annex.
Amsterdam is a strange city, cold and sophisticated, hosting three of the finest art museums in the world: the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh and the Stedelijk. But the funny, precocious, frustrated, wilful and likeable voice of Anne Frank encourages a visitor to first negotiate a series of canals and narrow streets leading to her, whom most of us have known since we were small. It seems curious to be finally standing in a line outside one of the most human of war memorials which also has strong literary claims. As an important document of witness, the diaries are unique, but they are also superb memoir writing. Anne Frank, who admitted to having literary ambitions, is also a person with romantic desires and a fascinating range of mood shifts. The candour of her writing, particularly when describing her relationship with her mother, is heartbreakingly direct.
Quotations from her book cover the walls, and several of the rooms feature video units. The most powerful image is that of her father, Otto, who only read the diaries when he knew his girls were dead. Of Anne, he says, "I never knew her until I read the book".
Obviously not as stark an experience as exploring one of the death camps, this dark, plain house is compelling. Anne Frank, who died in Bergen Belsen of typhus, has defied death and continues to live as survivor as much as victim; her diaries ensure this. Downstairs, the many foreign language editions of the diaries are displayed. The inclusion of a small book shop is understandable, though I was disturbed by the presence of a cafe.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times. Next week: Mary Russell on Dickens's London
