An Emotional Dutch Day

Monday was our last full day in Amsterdam before we leave the continent and our "vacation" part of the trip. Today, Tuesday we depart for England and our working part of the month's adventures. We have experienced so many extraordinary sights and things during our first 13 days abroad and now look forward to our days on the cruise.  We will board the ship from Harwich England tomorrow and cruise for another 12 days. (Our email probably may not be very reliable so we may not have the ability to blog each day but we will catcch up when we have a connection).

As the title of this day suggests, it was an emotional day for us. Not only was it the finish of our exploring on our own in Europe but it was the day of a tour that we had planned for a long time. Since the first day that we started to work with Kari, we knew that when we were in Amsterdam we would want to spend some time walking in the footsteps of the numerous people who had sadly lived and died during WWII suffering the atrocities brought forth by Nazi Germany when they marched into Amsterdam. We both were very familiar with Anne Frank's life and knew that many other Jews had been torn from their homes in Amsterdam and sent to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis when they invaded this and other cities. But we had not realized the great amount of Jews that had lived in this beautiful city prior to and after the war. There were  over 100,000 Jewish citizens in this city prior to 1940 and fewer than 10% were left after the war. A very small number had left prior to the invasion but most were sent to the concentration camps when they were herded, like animals just because of their religion.

interior of the Portuguese synagogue

As Jews ourselves, we wanted to see everything we could, not just the obligatory Anne Frank that everyone visits while in Amsterdam. Kari pre-booked us into a 5 hour tour of Jewish Amsterdam which included the late 15th century Portuguese Synagogue. This lovely building is still as it was when built in the 16th century and has a lovely history that proves the strength of the souls that withstood the wars. It is still used for special occasions in much the same matter as early days with no electricy for lights or heat. We learned that it was called Portuguese because the Spanish Jews were not being permitted to emigrate into Amsterdam in the 15th century during the Inquisition in Spain by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand ,so the immigrants said they were from Portugal and not Spain where many of them had actually fled from.
This emotionally interesting tour also included the collections of items in the basement of the synagogue and also the Jewish Historical Museum. These two buildings house hundreds of artifacts including the largest library of books and scholarly Jewish writings in current use in the world.
Our tour included a diamond factory owned by Jews for hundreds of years and it was interesting. We had expected a more high pressure tour trying to sell us diamonds but we were pleasantly surprised that it was not that kind of tour. Very interesting.

Anne Frank remembered

The day ended with a tour through the Anne Frank house. Since we had purchased the package tour, we did not have to stand in the rain for 3 hours waiting to get into this place that the Frank family spent their final days in Amsterdam before being rounded up and taken to Auschwitz where all but the father, Otto died. Anne wrote this touching story of her family's days in hiding and then died in thee camp just a month before liberation. I think everyone has read this book sometime during their lives.

Entrance to the hideout

 I also acted in the play and was the student director of, "The Dairy of Anne Frank" while I was in drama in high school, so I was very familiar with the story but visiting house was so much more emotional to me. Walking the very floors and stairs that this family so secretly walked for so long gave me a much better understanding of just how cramped this space was for the eight people in hiding.  It took almost 2 hours to meander through the house, along with the hundreds of other silent people reading everything written and trying to understand what a difficult emotional time this must have been for all involved in this and other similar families. A time of uncertainty, not knowing who might be sabotaging them with the Nazis, who were intent on capturing all of the Jews for eventual extermination in the camps.
We somberly returned to our hotel after walking for over ten hours and found that we had added another 7.5 miles on our pedometer. After a stop for dinner at an Argentinian steak house,  we spent the rest of the evening packing and resting up the the next part of our adventure, two more train trips and a 6 hour ferry from the Netherlands to England.
Our new adventures begin tomorrow...on to England and Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas.