My Holland
These images, taken over the course of my lifelong relationship with the Netherlands, particularly The Hague, the city where my mother grew up during the 1930s and hid out from the German occupiers from 1942 to 1945—also the subject of my historical memoir, The Frank Family That Survived—and later the country where my career as a foreign correspondent was born, and to which I have since frequently returned, often as not with my mother, Dorrit, who continued to cherish Nederland, collectively tell the story of that relationship, while also comprising a portrait of Nederland, Den Haag, Amsterdam, and its people and prominent places over the last five decades.
Of special note are two photos of Pieter van den Zaandestraat, the cul de sac of The Hague where the Franks hid out, in 1965, when I accompanied my mother, Dorrit on her emotional return to Den Haag, including a particularly dramatic one (especially for a fourteen year old boy) of No. 14, the apartment where they “dived under,” from across the street, which looked (and still looks) much the same as it had during the Occupation.
As the viewer will gather, like my mother, who returned every year to The Hague (while she was able), I remain a Hagenaar at heart. There is also a particularly nice portrait of Dorrit taken at the Gemeentemuseum—the same museum where my grandfather, the art dealer Myrtil Frank, sold several paintings—during our last reunion there in 2008.
