Amsterdam Diary

  Amsterdam.Beyond obvious.

Canals crisscrossing the city, moored boathouses, and a series of gabled buildings complete the site of Amsterdam. Stroll around its city center and come across a monument or museum at every hundred-meters stretch.

While walking through the canal side, I stumbled upon a board- De Schaduwkade. This road has several metal plaques embedded on the canal wall. Every plate denotes the name of the Jewish resident and the house address before the German army persecuted them. Overnight, more than two hundred Jews were dragged out of their homes and sent to the detention center from De Schaduwkade. A cold shiver runs down the spine, just by the thought of it!

Walk further to come across a statue called “De Docwerker” or the Dockworker, honouring the ordinary people who came out openly to protest the massacre of the Jews in occupied Europe. Germans brutally suppressed the strike in just three days.

At a distance, a shining star of David catches the attention of every passerby. The site unveils another dark chapter of wartime. After the annexation by Germans, Jews had to wear the yellow star, a device to marginalise them. In the complex, there is a Jewish historical museum. The Jewish community had a rich heritage in Amsterdam, and the museum accurately represents it.

These sites keep you occupied with myriad thoughts of that era. But one name that keeps cropping up in your mind is that of Anne Frank and the pages of her diary where she makes a heartfelt description of her fear, sufferings, and confidence.

Take a long walk and visit her wartime hiding place in a canal house known as Secret Annexe. This adolescent diarist took shelter in this house with her family and four other housemates for two years. Anne did not survive the war, but her diary reached out to millions.  Her diary became a symbol of Jewish suffering across the world. For two consecutive years, the residents of this house managed to cover themselves from the prying eyes of German police and lift their spirits. The chambers of the building and their belongings are a grim reminder of their miseries.

The well-known museums or understated monuments, every site is a grim reminder of the atrocities that three-quarters of Dutch Jews faced during world war II.