Jolly Jefferson #4

One spring break, back during college, my buddies convinced me to take a trip to Amsterdam. They wanted to go smoke pot and drink Absinthe. I was a bit curious about the Absinthe, but I didn’t need to travel seven thousand miles to smoke pot. I could just call my dealer. But they ended up egging me on until eventually I went.

It was a blast. I honestly don’t remember much of that week. But I do remember Wednesday, because that was the day I woke up early and snuck off for some alone time. There were a couple of sites I wanted to see that wouldn’t interest my buddies. The Van Gough museum, a couple other places.

But the one place I really wanted to see was the Anne Frank house. I knew my buddies couldn’t care less, but this was a piece of history. I’d read the Diary of Anne Frank in high school and been deeply moved by the plight of Jews in Europe during the 1930s and 40s. I wanted to see the place for myself.

So I hopped a bus and followed the directions until I got to the House. I paid my eight Euros and wandered around.

I read all the material and just reflected on what I had read and what I was seeing. After a while, I started to get angry. Here we were, a bunch of tourists, looking through this house like it was some attraction to be viewed – like the Washington Monument or Disneyland.

I couldn’t help thinking of the fear that poor little girl and her family must have felt, hidden up in that attic, worried about every knock on the door. Was that the visit they would be discovered? Were those Nazi soldiers down there, come to take them to the camps?

How could you trust anyone? Sure, the family that was housing you were trustworthy. Because their lives were just as forfeit as yours if they were caught. But what about the neighbors? What if someone had dropped a dime on you? Anyone could betray you, just to make themselves look good. Who knew why people did what they did in those days?

Studies had been done – turns out a lot of people just respond to authority, regardless of what that authority orders them to do. Stanley Milgram did a study of it, back at Stanford in the 60s. With a little coaxing, people could be convinced to apparently electrocute complete strangers. And all because some man in a lab coat, with a clip board, told them to continue an experiment they were being paid $5 to participate in.

Some of the subjects had to be treated psychologically. The realization that they were capable of torture and murder, just because a man in authority told them to press a button was too much for some of them. It broke them. Universities weren’t allowed to conduct those types of experiments any more.

I shook myself as these dark thoughts took over my head. I needed to get out of this house. I needed to get back to the hotel. After all, my friends were probably waiting for me. I wanted to take a night off, but they told me we only had a couple nights left. We just had to see a sex show while we were there. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but what could I do? I didn’t want them to think less of me. God, peer pressure is a bitch.