The House on the Canal by Thomas Harding with illustrations by Britta Teckentrup; Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press; © 2025; ISBN 9781536-240702; 50 pages; $19.99.
SAN DIEGO – The house at 263 Prinsengracht (Prince’s Canal) in Amsterdam was built in 1635, more than three centuries before its most famous resident—Anne Frank–lived and hid there from the Nazi occupiers.
Author Thomas Harding researched what had happened in that house before the Franks – Anne, her sister Margot, father Otto, and mother Edith – rented it in 1940, both for Otto’s businesses on the ground floor and for a residence above.
Records show that Dirk van Delft constructed the house—as well as an annex behind it. It was roomy enough for Baefje Bisschop and her 12 children, who moved into the house in 1653. The large family withstood the plague of 1663.
In 1740, a childless couple, Isaac & Cornelia van Vleuten, moved into the house. He was a merchant, importing and exporting slaves, spices, and laudanum (a medicine made from opium). A wealthy merchant, van Veuten and his wife held fancy balls in their home. After they merchant died and his wife moved away, the ground floor of the house was used as a horse barn.
In the next century, the chemical firm D’Ailly and the vegetable and meat canners, Dros & Tieleman Brothers, were among the businesses that occupied the house. A chimney fire in 1884 was extinguished by firefighters.
From 1901-1929, Alle Pieron and family moved their home and iron foundry into the house. During the next 11 years, various small businesses rented the quarters. In 1940, seven months after Nazi Germany conquered the Netherlands, Otto Frank and his family moved into the building. They went into hiding in 1942 in the top three floors of the annex after Nazis began to deport Jews to concentration camps. Four other people went into hiding with them: a dentist, Fritz Pfeffer; Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, and their son Peter. Six people secretly aided them, purchasing groceries and carrying out other errands. Among them, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were the most famous.
Anne, a young teenager, occupied herself with writing a diary, vividly portraying their lives in hiding. After discovery, she and the other occupants of the secret annex were captured on August 4, 1944, and sent to concentration camps. Anne’s father, Otto, was the only one to survive. When he returned to Amsterdam, Miep gave him Anne’s diary, which she had found. When it was published, it became one of the first, and most famous, records of the Holocaust.
The building was purchased and donated by NV Berghaus, a textile firm, for a historical museum. It was then renovated and opened to the public in 1960, having since drawn tens of millions of visitors.
Bitta Teckentrup, the books illustrator, evocatively pictures the house, which today is ten years shy of its 400th birthday, during the many stages of its history.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.