One of the most striking aspects of Jerry Hayes’ journey to the Holy Land started with a stop in Amsterdam.

The Blissfield native had a 12-hour layover in The Netherlands’ capital on his way to the Middle East with a contingent from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. One of their stops in the city was the Anne Frank Museum, which Hayes described as a very moving experience.

Frank and her family were German Jews who moved to Holland when the Nazis came to power and became trapped there when the Germans invaded in 1940. They hid in rooms of her father’s office building until being discovered by the Nazis in 1944. Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, one of 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. She was 15.

Her father, Otto Frank, was the only family member to survive the concentration camps. He found Anne’s diary, and it was published in 1947. It has become one of the world’s most widely read books.

The museum preserves the Franks’ hiding place and tells the family’s story as well as the history of the time.

“All through the trip I was thinking, ‘How similar,’ ” Hayes said. “I mean the difference in what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and what the Germans did to the Jews, the main difference is the true amount of out-and-out killing. But corralling them in certain portions of a city or an area — it’s very, very similar.”

Israeli officials disagree.

“Any comparison to Hitler shows a deep and troubling ignorance of Jewish history,” said a statement by the Israeli consulate in Chicago. “Any comparison to Hitler we find foul and deeply disturbing.”

Israel is interested in having good relations with its neighbors and is working on a two-state solution to create separate Palestinian and Israeli states, the statement said.

“Unfortunately, those efforts have been hampered by Palestinian organizations who do everything they can to halt any political solution,” the statement said. “Their only interest is in killing Israelis and Jews.

To counter that, “Israel is involved in anti-terror activities to ensure its people are not harmed.”

Personal identification papers are vital to travel. Hayes said the worst experience came at the border crossing between Jordan and Israel near the Allenby Bridge.

The group of six included Al Asfour, a Palestinian who also holds American citizenship and has lived in Brighton, Mich., for 50 years. The group was put through all manner of security checks for more than two hours.

“The other five people in my group had all been fingerprinted, photo ID’d, and apparently they did those retina scans,” Hayes said. “Almost two hours later, Al comes walking through.”

Asfour had been separated from the others and put in a room. He was left sitting alone and was not released until he made a cell phone call to Bishop Munib Younan, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.

“It was a two-hour detainment for nothing,” Hayes said.

Claims of mistreatment are subject to the Israeli legal system, according to the Israeli consulate’s statement.

Hayes is quick to point out that not all Israelis treat the Palestinians in that manner. He noted that Jewish history is filled with instances of persecution and speculated that this may just be Israel’s way of securing its right to exist.

“I think because they were persecuted, because of the Holocaust, I think they are so determined to never let that happen to them again, that unfortunately, they have taken it to the extreme the other way,” he said.