Visiting the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam is a profoundly moving experience. I first went there as a 19-year-old college student backpacking around Europe. Of course I had read the Diary of Anne Frank as a youngster, when I was probably around the same age as Anne (13) when she began writing her diary. Naturally, I was both captivated by her writing and horrified by what happened to her and her family.
Anne and her family — her parents Otto and Edith, and older sister Margot — and then four more people, hid in the secret annex above her father’s place of business, after Germany invaded the Netherlands in May, 1940. They feared that they would be deported by the Nazis to a so-called ‘labour camp,” if they did not go into hiding. They entered the secret annex on July 6, 1942.
On June 12, 1942, Anne’s thirteenth birthday, just before the family went into hiding, she received a plaid diary. She began writing in it on June 14, in Dutch. She wrote not only in her diary about her thoughts and feelings, but she also wrote short stories, began a novel, and copied passages from books she read into her Book of Beautiful Sentences. Beginning in May, 1944, Anne rewrote much of her original diary. She intended to publish it as a book after the war, called The Secret Annex.
If you wish to visit the museum, please be aware that tickets are released each Tuesday at 10 am Netherlands time (CET time zone) for visits six weeks later. You must book tickets ahead of time and I can say from personal experience that they sell out quickly. Click here for the link to the website. When buying tickets, you can purchase tickets to just visit the museum, or to combine a visit with an introductory program.
Photographs are not allowed inside the house museum, but I was able to take some photos in the introductory galleries.
These images of Anne, below, were taken as passport photos in May, 1939.
Entering the secret annex. The entrance was hidden behind a moveable bookshelf.
Going through the small rooms in the secret annex is riveting. You see photos of Hollywood movie stars that Anne placed on the wall of her room; the map on the wall where Otto tracked the movements of the Allies; and the pencil marks where Otto kept track of his daughters’ heights.
There is a lot of information and visuals, including a virtual tour of the annex, on the museum’s website. Click here.
After existing the house museum, there are cases that include many of Anne’s original writings and notebooks, including the first diary she began. Some of the notebooks she wrote in are lost. All of 1943 is missing.
According to the Anne Frank House Museum website: “After the arrest of the eight people in hiding, helpers Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl found Anne’s writings in the Secret Annex. Miep held on to Anne’s diaries and papers and kept them in a drawer of her desk. She hoped that she would one day be able to return them to Anne. When she learned that Anne had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she gave all the notebooks and papers to Anne’s father, Otto Frank.”
The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into over 70 languages. This book rack displays an assortment.
About a block away from the Anne Frank House is a small statue of Anne.
Anne’s words:
