xxxSummerxxx
member
Reged: 29/03/2008
Posts: 10529
Loc: Billericay,Essex
|
|
Thank you for your replys Ladies.Sadly the only time ive been to Amsterdam was with Westham ladies but hope to go back this year to see Anne's home.
--------------------
|
RunGirl
member
Reged: 11/01/2008
Posts: 1338
Loc: South East London
|
|
I've been to Anne Frank's house and found it very moving.
I also went to Auschwitz/Birkenau last year, and it was a very harrowing and moving place to visit.
I was sorry that I missed the programme this evening but will try to watch it tomorrow.
|
Chatelaine
member
Reged: 23/08/2007
Posts: 4176
Loc: A village somewhere on the Con...
|
|
At times have seen quite a bit of Amsterdam, as would be understandable...... but NEVER have been to the Anne Frank House..... NEVER will go!..... NEVER want to go!!
In my much younger years, I read some of Anne's diaries....
During the war, my mother did her bit for the resistance, as did my grandparents, for the house was a safe house for Jewish people fleeing to England or Switserland..... I have heard all the stories. As a toddler I saw the results of the war.... of the bombings, the destruction, and I could feel the fear and the terror like electricity crackling in the now calm summery sun......
I used to love listening to Dvorak's Slavonic Dances when I was about 10... 11 yrs old. I had the record on as I read about the monstrous horrors of the concentration camps..... All these years later, I cannot listen to that music anymore without feeling physically sick!
I am avoiding the series on TV now too at all costs!!
I know that things change.... and for Germany they certainly have..... but there is a part of me that cannot forget..... and it taints my present day feelings towards the Germans..... sorry, but true.....
--------------------
|
MariaE
member
Reged: 13/10/2007
Posts: 255
Loc: Essex
|
|
I've been. Make sure you get there 10-15 mins before official opening time as the queues can be horrendous.
My dad was a prisoner in one of Stalin's gulags. The young Poles were starved and used as slave-labour in the Siberian forests and mines. He only survived due to the fact that Hitler, in his madness, decided to attack Russia, so Poland became an ally. The youths and remaining men were taken into the British Army, and after the War, my dad ended up here in the UK. Funny old world.
|
katew
member
Reged: 08/08/2006
Posts: 89
Loc: Bath
|
|
I've been, and found it very moving. The word that came to my mind at the time was 'humbling'.
--------------------
Old enough to know better and young enough not to care ...
|
evianers
member
Reged: 19/01/2008
Posts: 66
Loc: Evian-les-Bains, France
|
|
As we were resident in Antwerp for 15 years, Amsterdam was a frequent day out for us: so visiting Anna Frank's house was incorporated into one of these trips. A very sobering and sad experience but what probably no-one knows is that there is a fortified area outside Bruxelles [Fort Breendonck] which was a collection point/interrogation point for Jews, Communists, dissident Catholic priests et al which is also now open to the public. To exit, one has to pass through the execution point where the scars are still clearly visible on the walls. It was so harrowing I cried and could not speak for 15 minutes. OH has asked whether I should like to visit Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau [he has been] but it would be just too upsetting.
|
PLASMO
member
Reged: 13/03/2008
Posts: 13020
Loc: FLOUNCELAND
|
|
Summer,
We also lived a drive away from Amsterdam, as we lived in Germany for many years. I had many opportunities to visit the concentration camps but declined.
I visited the house numerous times, especially when friends and family came to visit, and found it really quite unnerving, I couldnt believe how chlosterphobic it was, and how the family lived there for so long.
As a child born in 1944, not old enough to have experienced anything to do with the war, we all get told different stories by our parents etc, we all know certain situations were horrific, and things that happened, must never be allowed to ever happen again.
In this country we have never had to live with a foreign military presence, I cant imagine what it must have been like, and how terribly frightened everyone must have felt.
I shall watch the programme that is on BBC 1 every night this week about Anne Frank, because I feel that apart from telling the story of a young girl, and her experiences of life during a war, it was just one incident of the desperation to survive in that awful time.
Plasmo x
--------------------
|
xxxSummerxxx
member
Reged: 29/03/2008
Posts: 10529
Loc: Billericay,Essex
|
|
Thank you so much for all your replys Ladies.I hope to have it on my list of things to do this year.
--------------------
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit
Reply
Quote
