The Anne Frank House is a biographical museum commemorating the teenage holocaust victim and her family.
Anne Frank (1929-1945) was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Otto and Edith Frank. In 1933, following Hitler’s rise to power, the family moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. There, her father established a fruit extract company located at a 17th-century building on Prinsengracht 263. She had a normal childhood; she went to school, loved to read, and enjoyed riding her bike.
That changed in May 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands and enforced antisemitic rules that limited the freedom of the Jewish citizens and threatened their lives. The Frank family tried to escape the country but were eventually trapped under the Nazi regime and decided to go into hiding.
On July 6th, 1942, the family moved to a secret annex at Otto’s office. It was a 450 square feet space at the rear extension of the building, hidden from all sides. Within a few months, four more people came to live in the annex – a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer and the Van Pels family – Hermann, Auguste, and their son Peter.
For the next two years, Anne described her life in the diary she received for her 13th birthday, only a month before moving into the annex. In it, she expressed her thoughts and feelings about the war and the day after; she detailed her daily routines, her conflicts with her mother and sister Margot, her opinions of the other annex’s residences, and her feelings toward Peter Van Pels.
When she heard on the radio that the government would collect and publish diaries written during the war, Anne, who aspired to become a famous writer, decided to edit her diary into a running story – The Secret Annex.
On August 4th, 1944, the secret German police raided the annex and deported all its inhabitants to Auschwitz. Later on, Anne and Margot were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where both died of typhus, Anne at 15 and Margot at 18.
After their evacuation, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two of Otto’s employees who helped hide the families, managed to rescue some of the residences’ belongings; Anne’s diary was among them. Otto, the only surviving family member, returned to Amsterdam after the war and received the diary. He decided to fulfill his daughter’s wish, and in 1947 it was published in Dutch.
The book was titled Het Achterhuis. Dagbrieven van 14 juni 1942 tot 1 augustus 1944 (The Secret Annex. Diary Letters from 14 June 1942 to 1 August 1944) as Anne wanted. It became a bestseller, drawing people to visit the building and view the hiding place. It was later retitled the Diary of Anne Frank and translated into more than 70 languages.
In 1955, demolition was planned for the building. Following a successful campaign by a Dutch newspaper, it was saved. Two years later, Otto established the Anne Frank Foundation to purchase the building and turn it into a museum. Eventually, the building was donated to the foundation, and the funds were used to buy the house next door. In 1960, the museum was opened to the public.
Today, the Anne Frank House incorporates the entire building and includes several exhibition spaces. Once you go up the narrow stairs and through the hinged bookcase that hides the annex’s entrance, the world from the book comes to life. On display are Anne’s original diary, the pictures of movie stars she hanged on her bedroom wall, a map of Normandy that allowed the annex’s residences to follow the advance of the allies, height marks of Anne and Margot, Otto and Edith’s wedding photos, a notebook with short stories Anne wrote, and her Favorite Quotes Book, where she copied quotes she liked.
Also on view is the Academy Award Shelley Winters won for her portrayal of Petronella van Daan (the characterization of Auguste van Pels) in The Diary of Anne Frank movie. Also recommended is a visit to the multimedia room, where you can take a virtual tour through Anne’s house and hear stories of other people who went into hiding during the war.
Outside the museum, at Westermarkt 74, there is a bronze statue of Anne sculpted by Mari Andriessen in 1977. The marker beside it reads a quotation from Anne’s diary: “I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself, and then I am satisfied.”
Other places in Amsterdam commemorating Anne Frank are a sculpture in Merwedeplein, where the Frank family lived before leaving for the annex, and the Anne Frank mural at Ms. van Riemsdijkweg 31.
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