The house where Anne Frank, born in 1929, lived with her family, and where she wrote her famous Diary, is one of the most moving places in Amsterdam, because it recalls the dramatic events of the Holocaust and the tragic fate of the Dutch Jewish community during the Nazi occupation.
The visit starts on the ground floor, in the stores where Anne’s father, Otto Frank, traded in spices and foodstuffs. The offices of the company were on the first floor, but the most fascinating part is on the second floor.
Visitors can see the small rooms, hidden by a sliding bookcase, where, from July 1942 to August 1944, the Frank and van Peels families, along with other members of Amsterdam’s Jewish community, hid from the Nazis.
The rooms are bare, but on one of the walls you can see marks indicating the growing height of Anne and her sister Margot.
During the time she was forced to remain prisoner here, Anne began writing stories, ideas for novels and, above all, a diary entitled “the secret annex”, in which she expressed an overwhelming passion for life and unshakable trust in human beings.
Anne left the Diary behind when she was deported, but after the war, it was returned to her father, who had survived Auschwitz. Otto Frank had the diary transcribed and published in 1947.
The visit ends with the attic, where visitors learn the tragic fate of the Frank sisters: after they were discovered and captured, both Anne and Margot died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just a few weeks before the end of the war.
In an adjacent building, a multimedia experience shows visitors a reconstruction of the secret annex, as well as a video on tolerance.
The house is one of the city’s top visitor attractions, so to avoid the long lines, I’d advise you to purchase your ticket in advance: almost a million people a year pass through the narrow rooms at Prinsengracht 267.
An interesting fact: Anne Frank’s Diary is one of the most widely read books in the world. It has been translated into 70 languages, and has inspired movies for both cinema and television.
Language: English