![]() We hear of dozens, hundreds or thousands killed. I couldn’t help but think of many other innocent victims-including young girls who dream of becoming writers-in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere. (Attendance has risen over the years.) The mood on the street was almost festive, as groups of tourists politely waited their turns to pose next to the modest sign identifying this home. On this recent trip, I saw that many more people were streaming from the museum to the front door of the house. That one moment from 1944 was all too believable. I shook myself free of this vision and gazed about: a lovely Dutch street beside a canal lined by picturesque apartments. Then I saw their jackboots hitting the sidewalk-tha-wump, tha-wump!-as they ran into the house and up the stairs. I heard the squeal of tires, as trucks carrying SS troops came to a stop, yards from the doorstep. ![]() Looking at the cobblestones, I experienced something of a waking dream. I found it hard to picture such hell occurring in these countryside locations.īut when I first visited the Anne Frank House decades ago, the reality was visceral. Within such relatively small and unimpressive sites. In these barracks? In these showers? In these crematoriums? On these grounds? So many people. I’ve seen the camps, and it’s almost impossible to conceive of what occurred in these places. Just pondering if storyfication is necessary to forge comprehension of-or identification with-malevolence so immense. Does that make an unimaginable nightmare real? Do we require a compact, easy-to-envision story-a girl hiding-to process such evil? I’m not criticizing anything here. I wondered if for many the Holocaust has been TL DRed to the tale of this one person. A few doors down, visitors lined up for the associated museum, a modern structure boasting a sleek design with large glass windows. The street was crowded with tourists waiting to enter this famous building that holds what was once the hideaway for Anne and her family. This was what occurred to me last week when I passed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam during a visit to the Netherlands. Has this one girl, for many of us, become the main connection to that horror? But how many (who do not have a relative who perished in that horror) can identify another or a third? Out of 6 million victims. My hunch is that most people would respond to that by recalling Anne Frank. Name one person who died in the Holocaust.
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