2026 African Safari: Amsterdam, May 25th

Monday, May 25, 2026

Busy day today! Found a self-service laundry this morning and washed all our clothes before our departure for Cape Town tomorrow. While at the laundromat, we met a couple from California who happened to live in Danville (where Ashley’s in-laws live), who happened to live in the same development as Lee and Mary, who were also once dental patients of Lee’s, now patients of Brent’s brother Garrett. What a small world!

After finishing our laundry and having lunch, we took a walk through Amsterdam’s charming Jordaan neighborhood with its picturesque canals and winding cobblestone lanes. The highlight of the day (and the most impactful) was our visit to the Anne Frank House in the late afternoon.

From July 1942 to August 1944, the Frank family and four other Jews lived in a secret annex behind the offices of the Opecta company. Access to the annex from the office building was via a swinging bookcase that hid the original entrance to the annex. It’s hard to imagine 9 people living in a space less than 1,000 square feet for two years trying to stay quiet during the day (including not flushing the toilets) so people in the adjoining offices wouldn’t hear them. When they were arrested in August 1944, the allies had landed in Normandy and the tide was turning in their favor.

After the Frank family were sent to Westerbrook, a concentration camp northeast of the city, they were then transported on the last train to Auschwitz in Poland. Anne and her sister Margot were then moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Of the 9 people living in the secret annex, only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived. Anne and Margot died of typhus within days of each other in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by British soldiers. After evading the Nazis for two years, it’s tragic they were arrested at a time when the Germans were losing the war and would soon cease the transport of prisoners to Auschwitz.