Courage... strength... inspiration... heartbreak...

These are the words that come straight into my mind when I think about Anne Frank and her diary.

German-born Anne is probably the best-known victim of the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. She and her family spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a secret warehouse annex in Amsterdam, protected by non-Jewish friends. Her diary tells the true story of a young Jewish girl whose life dramatically changes within the course of three years.

Anne had received the diary as a present from her father, Otto, for her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942. It traces the lives of her Amsterdam-based family as they are forced into hiding. As Anne grew older, she went beyond mere description and wrote about more abstract and philosophic matters, such as her belief in God and human nature.

In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Anne Frank's father, Otto moved the family to Holland. After the Nazi occupation of Holland on May 15, 1940, the lives of Jewish families like the Franks became severely restricted. When Anne’s older sister Margot was called up to go to Germany on July 5, 1942 for relocation to a work camp, the Frank family’s lives changed forever.

The family faced arrest if Margot did not comply. But her parents, sensing the impending call-up, had already organized a secret hiding place, an empty section of Otto’s office building at 263 Prinsengracht. There was enough room for themselves, as well as Hermann van Pels, Otto’s co-worker, his wife and son, Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer, an acquaintance of the Frank family.

An exterior view of Anne Frank's house

I first read the diary when I was in primary school, and again when I was in high school. Ten years later, I knew what it was about, but I couldn't remember the emotions I felt reading it. Perhaps I had been too young.

Before I left Australia for a holiday in Europe, I decided to read the diary again, which is also praised for its literary qualities. I knew I would be visiting the house in Amsterdam, and I wanted that experience to really mean something. I spent my mornings and afternoons on the train to and from work, reading about the life, and death, of Anne Frank. I was once again captivated by her innocence, the terror she experienced and the trauma of her family and her life underground.

I put myself into her place and lived the moments in my mind, imagining what I would do in certain situations. I also allowed myself to feel emotions towards Anne and her family. I got angry at her mother, I admired her father and I loved Peter Van Pels as she did. I wanted the moment that I stepped into her house in Amsterdam to be truly unique. It was.

The house is located next to a canal, just a short walk from the Central Station. Standing outside, I looked around at the street Anne and her sister Margot stared at through closed curtains. I saw the road where Anne had described seeing soldiers patrolling and Jews fleeing, terrified, to escape the war.

Where she saw friends and neighbors taken away by the army, marching towards certain death, I saw people dressed in clothes Anne dreamed of owning, faces as beautiful as the pictures she cut from magazines and posted on her walls, laughter and smiles as friends shared stories and tourists scoured the streets in search of history.