Haarlem & Amsterdam

We left Berlin early in the morning to start the long drive to Haarlem in the Netherlands. Traveling at high speed on the German autobahn makes for a more interesting drive, but it was still a long distance. We were hustling to arrive at the Corrie ten Boom house for the last tour of the day. The house where the ten Boom family hid Jews is located in Haarlem, looking very similar to the war times. At the entrance we met friend of my parents from Holland. We were ushered inside by a friendly lady, along with a handful of other visitors, and sat in the same living room where the family had socialized before the tour started. The father had run a clock and watch shop on the first floor (there is a ten Boom clock shop still active on the first floor, but it is not associated with the family and the name is kept only for marketing reasons). Corrie was one of the first women in Holland to become certified in clock repair. The hiding place was more than just the small room we were to see later in an upper room. The family organized relocations of Jewish families to the country to escape the Nazis. Corrie was the coordinator, arranging transportation and lodging for the families on the run. There were several Jews who lived with the family for an extended period of time, and the “hiding place” was designed to protect them. The family used a small sign in the window to indicate if it was safe for Jews to enter or if the police were searching the house (as they did on many occasions) the sign was removed from the window. Our guide gave us a passionate description of the life of Corrie and then took us upstairs to see the “hiding place”. The hiding place was behind a false wall in a small bedroom. Designed by an architect, the false wall was made of brick and the floor boards were cut so that it appeared they ended at the wall. These features foiled the police who usually discovered such places by knocking on hollow wooden walls or noticing floor boards extending beneath walls that they shouldn’t. The size of a small closet, the hiding place is about 30 inches deep, just high enough for a person to stand upright, and extending to allow about 6 people side-by-side. The entrance was a small panel at the bottom of a closet that was lifted out of the way to expose an opening just large enough for a person. The group practiced entering the hiding place regularly, increasing their efficiency at squeezing through the hole and returning the shoes to their proper place to disguise the door until they could be inside in less than one minute. The brick wall has been opened up, so we were able to step inside and get our pictures taken while standing in the hiding place. After we climbed more stairs to the roof, where a small balcony was the only place where the Jews could safely see the sun. The balcony was hidden from the street and the railings were extended with boards to block the view from neighboring house windows.

We were escorted through the Holland countryside by Jenny and her husband, driving past canals guided by small dikes to feed the fields. We stopped at a harbor, shivering in the wind while large boats passed. Then went for dinner at a cutesy neighborhood, isolated on an island. The houses were picturesquely snuggled together and wooden boats pulled their noses tight against the piers.

Our hotel was in downtown Haarlem, just around the corner from the central Market Square and cathedral. The town is an idyllic collection of canals and cobblestones, enlivened by the bicycling populace. Everyone rides a bike; very popular are bikes with a large box attached where kids happily bounce as their parents pedal. We enjoyed meandering through the streets, our eyes soaking in the views of boat-lined canals and well-kept houses.

The next morning we took the train to Amsterdam for the day. Amsterdam is Haarlem on steroids: bigger, busier, and bustling. Our first stop was the Anne Frank house. This is one of the most popular sites and we joined the line to enter. Inside we traipsed through empty rooms, well described through plaques on the wall. Anne’s father has refused to allow the rooms to be furnished as they were when the family lived there. Instead he prefers to emphasize the house as a memorial to all who had to live through this experience. The most moving part of the visit was video clip of Anne’s father near the end of the tour. He was speaking about his relationship with his daughter, with who he was very close. I was struck by his comments that even though he and his daughter were as close as any father and daughter can be, that he had no idea of what she really thought until reading her diary. His comment was that he doesn’t think that any parent ever truly knows their child when they are young. And without her diary he would have had a very different view of who his daughter was.

Amsterdam is covered with museums, both world calls art and history and those focused on various niche subjects. We avoided being trapped in any of these and wandered the streets, crossing wide canals with house boats in all directions, dodging bikers from all directions. We stepped inside the courtyard of the Begijnhof; this was “old” Amsterdam, an open area surrounded by homes with a church in the center. Later we joined a canal boat cruise on a long ride that looped far enough to reach the sea. We caught the train back to Haarlem to allow time to explore there in the evening, including finding a storybook type windmill for pictures.