I didn’t go to the Anne Frank House when I was in Amsterdam.
I intended to. Jewish history, and specifically European Jewish history, is fascinating for me. My connection to the actual book is tangential. I read most of The Diary Of Anne Frank when I was a kid, but my main memories of it come from the book report I did on it in school—my mother and I interviewed her seamstress Simone (who I believe was somehow related to us through marriage), a Belgian Jew who survived the Holocaust by hiding in the barn of a Catholic farmer outside of Brussels. After the war, eager to escape Europe, Simone met and married a Jewish American soldier and ended up in Massachusetts.
Perhaps I was a little young to appreciate it at the time, but that conversation with Simone (who has since passed away) stuck with me more than the actual book I was reporting on. Simone became my Anne Frank.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel so bad about skipping the Anne Frank House. Or maybe it was because the absurdly long queue made the whole prospect really unappealing.
Luckily, if you’re still interested in learning about Amsterdam’s Jews, there is an alternative.
Amsterdam is home to a comprehensive Jewish Museum, which is constructed inside four old conjoined synagogues in the Jewish Quarter of the city, and is next to the magnificent Portuguese Synagogue. (The admission ticket allows you to enter both of these buildings.) It’s easy to lose hours here—the museum doesn’t seem so big, but it is jam-packed with fascinating objects and information.
The exhibits begin in the Great Synagogue, with historical religious objects downstairs, and a history of Jews in the Netherlands from 1600-1890 upstairs. When I was in Aruba in December, I read a really wonderful book called The Coffee Trader, which is about a Portuguese Jewish merchant in Amsterdam in the 17th century—so I found myself particularly enraptured by this history exhibit.
Inside the Portuguese Synagogue
Then I was through a hall and up a winding staircase into another synagogue, this one filled with a different, darker sort of history—this is 20th century Jewish history, in which vibrant communities were annihilated by the Holocaust. There are historical objects, but there are also stories; as The Diary of Anne Frank proved, the stories tend to stay with us the longest. Even while this wasn’t the most heart-wrenching Holocaust museum I’ve seen (because I’ve been to DC’s Holocaust Museum, and Yad Vashem, and Auschwitz—oof) it was still upsetting… but also moving, and hopeful. The exhibit moves past WWII and into present day, and I learned all about the smaller but still vibrant Jewish community in Amsterdam.
After exploring so much of the Jewish Museum (including a temporary exhibit about Jewish Diaspora food which induced almost painful cravings for noodle kugel) I moseyed over to the Portuguese Synagogue, which is still actively used for worship.
The Portuguese Synagogue offers free audio guides, which I stupidly didn’t take advantage of. My friend Lee (who is such a great guy that he came in from Paris for the weekend just to keep me company) came along with me to the synagogue, and he knew even less about it than I did—so I found myself playing tour guide based off the things I’d read in the Jewish Museum. However, the whole place was fascinating regardless, and I did learn that it is the only synagogue outside of the Caribbean to have a sand-covered floor!
The whole Jewish Museum was such an enriching experience that I didn’t feel bad at all about missing out on the Anne Frank House and its endless entrance line. Give me another hour in the Portuguese Synagogue any day.
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