{"id":19038,"date":"2026-02-06T16:07:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/?p=17702"},"modified":"2026-02-06T16:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:07:20","slug":"what-are-we-stumbling-into-reasons-for-hope-and-fear-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2026\/02\/what-are-we-stumbling-into-reasons-for-hope-and-fear-again\/","title":{"rendered":"What are we stumbling into? Reasons for hope and fear again."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post, inspired by the Stolpersteins (‘stumbling stones’) of Amsterdam, attracted some surprising (to me) comments when it was first published in April 2019.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I am reposting now for two reasons. Fear of ‘the other’ has grown \u2013 in Scotland as elsewhere.\u00a0 But, more hopefully, ‘”Scotland\u2019s first Stolperstein was unveiled in Edinburgh on the pavement outside the former St Stephen\u2019s church building in Stockbridge, There are now 116,000 Stolpersteins\u00a0 across Europe, in memory of the Jews murdered during the Nazi terror.”<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sceptical Scot will go in search of the Edinburgh stone named for Jane Haining murdered at Auschwitz in 1944 but first here is what we found in Amsterdam, almost seven years ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children play football in the sharp spring sunshine,<\/strong> bright voices bouncing round the walls of close-packed tenement housing.\u00a0 We have reached the right place.<\/p>\n

An ordinary neighbourhood for people living ordinary family lives: going to school, catching trams to work, buying bread in the corner shop.\u00a0 You have to look carefully to find evidence of deadly disruption, the brutal destruction of ordinary human decency. We found it on our last day in Amsterdam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here it is.\u00a0 The Frank family home. Not the famous hiding place attracting thousands of visitors in the city centre.\u00a0 This is where Otto, Edith and their two daughters Margot and Anne lived. Peacefully among their neighbours until Hitler found a final solution to neighbourliness.\u00a0 Fear the \u2018other\u2019.<\/p>\n

We might well have walked past it but for the modest memorial set into the pavement at our feet. Stumbled upon. Four cobbles burnished with brass plaques.\u00a0 Otto Frank and Edith Frank, Margot and Anne Frank:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/figure>\n

Ondergedoken (in hiding) 1942-1944.\u00a0 Edith, vermoord (murdered) in Auschwitz 1945. Margot and Anne, vermoord 1945, in Belsen aged 19 and 15.<\/p>\n

I kneel down, fumbling in my pocket, to take a picture on my phone. Still kneeling, as if in homage perhaps, I look up to see a grey-haired man looking down from the window of this otherwise anonymous home.\u00a0 A look exchanged between strangers. He nods in recognition. And we walk on.<\/p>\n

Eyes open<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Stumbling stones,\u00a0Stolpersteine<\/a>, a quietly inspired idea by German artist Gunter Denmig. Since 1992, these discreet monuments to the 11 million victims of National Socialism across Europe have played a part in turning nameless numbers into real people, names and dates of birth and death recorded outside the doors of \u2018their last address of choice\u2019.<\/p>\n

We had been introduced to the stones a few days earlier by\u00a0Jonathan (Joe) Rouah<\/a>, a guide on the Anne Frank Tour.\u00a0 Once you get your eye in, you see stolpersteine in many streets and squares. Our Amsterdam week (booked before the Brexit breather) is in many ways an eye-opener, an odd mix of interwoven choice and chance, hope and fear.<\/p>\n

By choice we had opted for an apartment in the residential south side, knowing nothing of local history but noting with curiosity the Anne Frank Montessori school as we trundled our wheely bags through the streets, next day finding an Anne Frank statue in a small park near the local bakery.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, of course, that\u2019s where the Frank family lived,\u201d says Joe when we mention it to him on the guided tour.\u00a0 Rivierenbuurt was an area where many Jewish families settled when they arrived in Amsterdam, fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

By choice we had opted for the walking tour rather than the Anne Frank House, on the advice of a friend.\u00a0 \u201cThe house is really a museum, very busy, you probably get a better sense of Jewish life in Amsterdam on the tour\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tolerance is a nuanced word<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s a good choice.\u00a0 Joe is the best kind of guide \u2013 himself a newcomer, in love with the city but not blinded by it, a whimsical observer of social and political history.\u00a0 As a young graphic artist from Marseilles, he chose to move here and acknowledges the reputation for friendly welcome and tolerance.\u00a0 \u201cBut tolerance is a word with nuanced meaning,\u201d he says by way of introduction, our small group surrounded by synagogues which once served a Jewish population of around 80,000. By 1945 eighty per cent of them had been killed.<\/p>\n

Nuance rings a bell. By chance, I\u2019m travelling with\u00a0The Cut Out Girl<\/a>\u00a0by Bart Van Es, the story of a young Jewish girl in Holland, hidden and raised by foster parents during the Nazi occupation.\u00a0 \u201cThis is a country of tolerance,\u201d he writes, \u201cletting others get on with things\u2026this makes the Netherlands progressive. But could it also explain why the Germans were so often allowed to act as they did?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Anne Frank walk ends by the museum on Prinsengracht.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s become a bit of a shrine, and that\u2019s a good thing, I think,\u201d says Joe, \u201cI am afraid we need it, we need to keep remembering\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By chance, a day earlier exploring the reinvention of Amsterdam Noord shipyard, we met Anne Frank smiling from a monumental mural\u00a0\u2018Let me be myself\u2019<\/a>\u00a0by Brazilian graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra. Her diary, it seems, is the\u00a0most-read book<\/a>\u00a0among young people in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\"Let<\/figure>\n
\n

It\u2019s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It\u2019s a wonder I haven\u2019t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.\u00a0<\/em>Anne Frank<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Echoes of another time<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What are we stumbling into?\u00a0 How can we have been so careless? By choice or chance? For the rest of the week we walk, sometimes a little dazed, with Brexit breaking news. It seems to carry echoes of another time when populist opportunists arose from recession to destroy human decency.<\/p>\n

The far right has made inroads in the Netherlands too, with no pretence of tolerance. It\u2019s difficult to fit that electoral reality with the friendly, welcoming and prosperous city we see around us. Cyclists easy-riding through clean streets, public transport running on time, families at leisure in green spaces, not a beggar to be seen.\u00a0 And indeed the Green party made midterm advances here: \u2018Amsterdam is truly a leftist bubble\u2019 tweeted DutchReview (a magazine for expats).<\/p>\n

On a sunny Sunday morning we take a last walk round the neighbourhood, reluctant to be returning to our unhappy homeland (Scotland voted comfortably to Remain in Europe but that only adds to the frustration we feel in our divided, divisive politics).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hope and fear<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Rivierenbuurt ( \u2018Rivers Neighbourhood\u2019) feels a well-settled place. It was built in the 1920s for the middle classes, to a design by Hendrik Petrus Berlage \u2013 he stands, a Lenin-like statue, overlooking his work.<\/p>\n

\"Master<\/figure>\n

The neighbourhood appealed to many Jewish families escaping Nazi Germany. Including Otto Frank, who moved here with Edith, Margot and Anne, to establish a business selling spices and pectin for jam making in a traditional canal-side building in Prinsengracht. Behind the shop, which Otto had shrewdly made over to \u2018Aryan staff\u2019, was where they hid for two years until discovery in August 1944.<\/p>\n

Otto Frank<\/a>\u00a0survived Auschwitz . He died in 1980 at the age of 91. When he returned to Amsterdam in 1945 he found all his family and friends had perished. But his colleague Miep Gies had saved Anne\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n

We turn a corner and find the bookshop where Otto bought the diary for his daughter. The shop is closed on Sunday but there are photographs and letters in the window. It is an extraordinary story, inspiring horror and hope.<\/p>\n

In the green park around Anne\u2019s statue young boys play football. Their laughter echoes around\u00a0Merwedeplein<\/em>\u00a0square. And that feels right. Today I find another painful, poignant echo in the words of Anne Frank.<\/p>\n

\n

As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?\u00a0<\/em>Anne Frank<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Anne<\/figure>\n

Correction:<\/strong>\u00a0in earlier versions, I gave Anne\u2019s age as 16 \u2013 a miscalculation. She is thought to have perished from an outbreak of typhus at the Belsen concentration camp. The stolperstein gives the date of her death as March 1945. Her 16th birthday would have been 12 June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":19071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713,13],"tags":[732,30,267,733],"class_list":["post-19038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-culture","tag-antisemitism","tag-europe","tag-fascism","tag-stolpersteins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}