[Flaptekst]: Ronald Wilfred Jansen visited Anne Frank's home addresses in Frankfurt am Main, Aachen and Amsterdam; her hiding place the Secret Annex; and the Westerbork, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps where Anne Frank was imprisoned. His book describes her history and the objects that today still remind us of the environment in which she lived. His motivation for writing this book is that it was one of the last opportunities he would have to contact the people who knew Anne; these people revealed some new facts about her and her world. Other contemporaries of Anne Frank also contributed fascinating information about her surroundings. By tracing her footsteps, he gained a more complete picture of Anne Frank and her environment.[ReviewQuote]: Anne Frank Silent Witnesses: Reminders of a Jewish Girl's Life Reviewed by Michelle Anne Schingler July 16, 2014 Everywhere Anne Frank might have gone on her tragic journey bears silent witness in this travelogue/history. Ronald Jansen (Anne Frank: A Memorial Tour in Current Images, 2011) returns to a topic of personal fascination with his newest work on Anne Frank, a book that is both a travelogue and a history. Its informative, yet disquieting in ways that sometimes seem to exceed intent. Jansen admits at the outset that a wealth of information already exists surrounding Anne Frank, who has occupied the worlds imagination since the postwar publication of her diary. His decision to visit the sites of her life, those she experienced prior to and after her hiding, involves concerns beyond those of a mere biographer; by preserving images of the world she saw, he hopes to generate renewed interest in maintaining places that might speak to Anne as a cultural heritage. The photographs themselves arent included until late in the project and come to seem something of an appendix to the larger work. Jansen first attempts to re-create Annes world with words alone, tracing her family life chronologically, beginning with Otto Frank and his service during the first World War. Most of what one garners here isnt new, though Jansen does a good job of synthesizing many disparate sources. Included throughout are recollections from Jansens memorial tour: reflections of the buildings and streets that Anne may have been in or traveled. He speculates on what she may have felt or experienced in some places, empathizing with children of wartime. That much is left to conjecture punctuates the tragedy of her premature death, which, Jansen reminds the reader several times, was effected simply because she was Jewish. These speculations sometimes result in odd moments, though. Buildings the family may or may not have noticed with appreciation become essential to maintain, ostensibly because they are reminders of the world the Franks lived in. The loss of the tree she looked out on from the window of the Annex is mourned; so, too, is the demolition of the prison barracks where the Franks were held before deportation to Auschwitz. Jansen places Anne within the context of the larger tragedy of the Holocaust, but arguments that incidental places from the Franks lives bear silent witnesses leave little in Amsterdam subject to change. Each brick or street name in the book becomes a monument to what was lost. Such focus on the minute (where have Annes shoes gone to, where is the pillow on which she laid her head?) makes adequate memorializing seem impossible. Jansen visits sites reverently, but even his reverence comes to seem voyeuristic at times: in my mind, I saw Anne walking around the house. If I would have been able to travel back in time and meet her in real life, I wonder whether I would have been able to handle [it], he says at one point. In another, the annex was deserted, but I did not see Anne, holds the flavor of disappointment. What, precisely, Jansen expects from his memorial journey comes into question. If occasionally discomfiting, this is a well-intentioned and well-researched project.Anne Frank L. Vogelaar Hier was Anne Frank. Hier woonde ze, hier liep ze, hier ging ze naar school. Hier zat ze ondergedoken en schreef ze het dagboek waardoor ze postuum wereldberoemd werd. Hier is het gebeurd. R. W. Jansen uit Hoogeveen ging al die plaatsen langs. In 2009 publiceerde hij er een Nederlandstalig fotoboek over, nu een Engelstalig tekstboek. Hij ging naar Frankfurt am Main, naar Aken, naar Amsterdam. Hij bezocht de schuilplaats, Het Achterhuis. Hij kwam in de oorden der verschrikking, Kamp Westerbork, Auschwitz-Birkenau en Bergen-Belsen. Hij leefde zich in, in die spanningsvolle jaren, in die ontluisterende maanden achter het prikkeldraad. Hij sprak met mensen die Anne hebben gekend. En hij schreef het allemaal op. In het Engels, om meer mensen te bereiken, onder wie Amerikanen die mogelijk een geïdealiseerd beeld van de jonge Jodin hebben. En zo ontstond Anne Frank. Silent witnesses. Reminders of a Jewish girls life. Ik heb getracht in de voetsporen van Anne Frank te treden en de wereld te beleven zoals zij die mogelijk gezien en ervaren heeft, zegt de auteur. Hij zocht het allemaal grondig uit. De bijna 300 paginas tekst laten zich het gemakkelijkst lezen met het fraaie fotoboek Anne Frank 80 jaar. Een herdenkingstocht in actuele beelden bij de hand. In Bergen-Belsen overleed Anne Frank in maart 1945. Ze werd 15 jaar. Vermoord door de nazis om één reden: ze was een Jodin. Ik beschouw mijn boek dan ook als een eerbetoon aan haar. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boekgegevens Anne Frank. Silent witnesses. Reminders of a Jewish girls life, Ronald Wilfred Jansen; uitg. RWJ- Publishing, Hoogeveen, 2014; ISBN 978 94 9048 208 4; 295 blz.; 37,-.Jansen, motivated to write about Anne Frank because time is running out for people who knew Anne to tell the story, delivers a well-researched and at times jarring record of the places where she lived before her untimely death in 1944 at age 15. Statistics, such as that 102,000 of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands did not survive the war, are interspersed with descriptions of mundane events from Franks life, to sobering effect. Jansen employs long passages from Franks diary to connect the reader to his own accounts of the places Frank describes, including the house in Amsterdam where her family hid during the early years of the war and the streets where she saw the Nazis rounding up Jews. This work is best suited as a scholarly companion to Annes own diary. (BookLife)
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