The Anne Frank House is a museum dedicated to the remarkable story of Anne Frank, a young girl forced into hiding with her Jewish family during World War II.
The Anne Frank Diaries are famous the world over as the writings Anne Frank kept for those two years in hiding, during Nazi occupation. She started the diary when only thirteen years of age, in the secret rooms of her father’s office in Amsterdam. Otto Frank was eventually given the diary by associate Miep Gies many years later, after Anne died subsequent to their capture and incarceration at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The diary has since been published in more than 60 different languages, and is the source of inspiration for many people to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
The Anne Frank House museum has grown over the years and expanded into an adjacent property to become a full exhibition detailing the amazing story of Anne Frank and her family, and the wider plight of Jews during Nazi rule. The museum survived early demolition attempts by developers to become one of the most visited buildings in all Amsterdam, with over 9,000 visitors in the first year of opening growing to over one million visitors a year in more recent times. For interested parties unable to travel to see the Anne Frank house for themselves, there is an official Anne Frank House virtual tour available.
Originally the building was a production facility for a spice Mill, spread over 3 floors. The Anne Frank house layout was based on a three floor construction, but it was on the first floor, that Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank had an office in a rear extension of the building, which eventually would lead to their secret hiding place behind a bookcase. In total, this secret place, barely over 45 Sq.m, kept Anne, her older sister, Mother and Father and five other Jews hidden from the Nazi officials until their position was eventually supplied to the Nazi authorities, by persons unknown.
Once discovered by the Germans, all nine were taken captive and removed to concentration camps, where eventually only Otto Frank was to survive to see the end of the war.
As was routine at the time, the entire belongings of the vacated house were seized by the Nazis and redistributed back in the homeland to German families. Crucially, friend of the family Miep Gies was able to return to the building and recover the diary of Anne Frank before it could be taken by the Nazis during the clear out.
It was this diary and various papers that Otto Frank had managed to retain that were used in 1947 to eventually compile what would become known in the English translation as the Anne Frank Secret Annex.
Realising the delicate state of the building and its risk of being lost to developers, Otto Frank founded The Anne Frank Foundation. His determination to safeguard the Anne Frank House building paid off in 1957 when the owner of the building donated it to the Foundation as a good will gesture. From this point on Anne Frank House became a historical record of those terrible times of hardship endured by the Frank family and their four friends. Pictures of Anne Frank house in its restored state including the bookcase that led to the secret annex have intrigued the millions of readers of the Diary of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank House now features many Anne Frank pictures, a café and a bookshop to accommodate the massive interest in the story it has to tell. For her acting in the Anne Frank movie “The Diary of Anne Frank”, Shelly Winters won an Academy Award which she donated to the Anne Frank House, and has been on display there ever since.
People travel from all over the world to witness for themselves the actual building that Anne Frank wrote her remarkable diary from, making the Anne Frank House one of the most popular destinations in Amsterdam.