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 Frank’s life, to sobering effect. Jansen employs long passages from Frank’s 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 Anne’s own diary. (BookLife)

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. It’s 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 world’s 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 aren’t included until late in the project and come to seem something of an appendix to the larger work. Jansen first attempts to re-create Anne’s 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 isn’t new, though Jansen does a good job of synthesizing many disparate sources. Included throughout are recollections from Jansen’s 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 Anne’s 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.

Recensie(s) Recensie NDB Biblion d.d. 21 juni 2012. In chronologische hoofdstukken worden het leven van Anne Frank (1929-1945) en vooral wat nog herinnert aan haar leefomgeving beschreven. Hoofdstuk 1 gaat over Frankfurt am Main, waar haar joodse ouders Otto en Edith woonden, zusje Margot in 1926 werd geboren, zij in 1929. Vanwege de toenemende anti-joodse maatregelen van de nazi's emigreerde het gezin eind 1933 naar Amsterdam, thema van hoofdstuk 2. Het volgende hoofdstuk bespreekt het achterhuis, waar het gezin in 1942 onderdook toen na de Duitse bezetting ook in ons land de joden steeds meer werden vervolgd. De slothoofdstukken gaan over Westerbork, Auschwitz-Birkenau en Bergen-Belsen, de drie concentratiekampen waar de Franks terechtkwamen na in 1944 te zijn verraden. Herziene uitgave van de Nederlandse historicus en fotograaf (1964). Het bijzondere, boeiende verslag geeft veel info over de Franks en historische info over hun omgeving, maakt tastbaar wie Anne was, waar ze woonde, met wie ze sprak en wat ze zag. Met goede zwart-witfoto's en notenapparaat. Anne Frank. Stille Getuigen. Herinneringen aan het leven van een joods meisje.