Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [59]
Even the teacher asked me, “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It just came out of me.”
As I stood in front of the Frank House, I began to feel a very eerie sensation. I looked at the canal in front and thought, This canal, this bridge, even the trees, are all exactly the way they were fifty years ago. What had they witnessed? Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I was back in time. I saw German soldiers on motorbikes driving over the canals. I heard the shrill sounds of soldiers screaming in German for people to get out of their houses and move on and lots of gunshots in the distance. I felt frightened and alone and wanted to cry.
“Next please!” the ticket taker at the doorway announced as he held out his hand for my ticket. I quickly snapped back to present-day consciousness but could not shake the eerie and isolated impression still inside me. The tour guide explained that the Franks hid for two years in the annex above Mr. Frank’s office. As I looked around the entryway, I could tell that things had been changed over the past fifty years and that none of the original belongings were there. Instead, there was current information about the house, the war, and human rights issues.
The official part of the tour began when the guide led us down a short hallway to a bookcase. I was in awe. Here was the original bookcase that had blocked the passage to the Franks’s hiding place. Seeing the bookcase made the event very real and tangible. It was inspiring and at the same time sad. This commonplace bookcase was the only thing between the Nazis and the group of people who safely hid behind it for two long years. We were not allowed to take photos, but I could not help it. I whipped out my camera and snapped a picture before anyone noticed. I felt such a connection to this bookcase and this place. Maybe it was because of the play I was in long ago, but I could not stop thinking about Anne and her father, Otto, and the other family members. Anne may have fantasized about being a famous Hollywood actress, but did this little Dutch girl ever imagine that her life would become the stuff of books and movies and that her experience would change the world’s understanding of the war? Her life played a much richer and more poignant part in history than would ever have happened from any role she might have played onstage.
As we climbed the stairs to the annex, I noticed that the walls had not been painted; they were exactly as they had been when the Franks lived there some fifty years earlier. I stopped and stared at a pencil mark. Had Anne drawn something on the wall, or did her pencil scrape the wall as she passed by? When we reached the top, only a few naked lightbulbs hung in the annex. As I walked around, I felt an overwhelming sense of being trapped. I couldn’t breathe. The tour guide helped me to a seat in the doorway. The rest of the people continued through the different rooms while I caught my breath.
I noticed a piece of glass covering the original floral wallpaper, which had since faded. All of Anne’s family photos, plus pictures that she had cut out from celebrity magazines of that period, were encased under glass. As I studied the photos, a man suddenly walked by. He was tall, with light brown hair, and he wore brown pants with suspenders and a white sleeveless undershirt. A towel over his bare shoulder suggested that he was on his way to or from the bathroom. As he passed, I telepathically asked, Who are you? He didn’t take notice of me, but I heard the word Fritz in my head, and then he was gone. I had seen and felt enough for the day, and it was time for me to leave.
I walked downstairs to the museum area and perused the glass cases that housed various pieces of clothing from the concentration camps, dishes the Franks actually used, and more photographs of