Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [39]
The Grachtengordel | Grachtengordel west |
The Anne Frank Huis
In 1960, the Anne Frank Foundation set up the Anne Frank Huis (daily: mid-March to mid-Sept 9am–9pm, July & Aug till 10pm; mid-Sept to mid-March 9am–7pm; closed Yom Kippur; €8.50, 10- to 17-year-olds €4, under-9s free; 020/556 7100, www.annefrank.org) in the premises on Prinsengracht where the young diarist and her family hid from the Germans during World War II. Since the posthumous publication of her diaries, Anne Frank has become extraordinarily famous, in the first instance for recording the iniquities of the Holocaust, and latterly as a symbol of the fight against oppression in general and racism in particular.
Anne Frank statue
A visit begins in the main body of the building, with several well-chosen displays setting the historical scene and explaining how and why the Franks took refuge here. Then you arrive at the entrance to the Secret Annex, or achterhuis, which was separated from the rest of the house by a false bookcase. The Secret Annex was stripped of furniture long ago, but it still bears traces of its former occupants – such as the movie-star pin-ups in Anne’s bedroom and the marks on the wall recording the children’s heights. The final part of the Anne Frank Huis visit is an educational section devoted to such themes as free speech, oppression and racism.
Anne Frank was only one of about 100,000 Dutch Jews who died during World War II, but this, her final home, provides one of the most enduring testaments to its horrors and, despite the number of visitors, most people find a visit very moving. Her diary has been a source of inspiration to many, including Nelson Mandela and Primo Levi, who wrote the following: “Perhaps it is better that way [that we can concentrate on the suffering of Anne]; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live”.
Due to the popularity of the Anne Frank Huis, the queues can be on the long side; try to come early or late to avoid the crush – or book a slot online and skip the queue altogether.
The Grachtengordel | Grachtengordel west | The Anne Frank Huis |
The story of Anne Frank
The story of Anne, author of The Diary of a Young Girl, her sister, parents and their friends, is well known. Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was a well-to-do Jewish businessman who fled Germany in December 1933 after Hitler came to power, moving to Amsterdam, where he established a spice-trading business on the Prinsengracht. After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Otto – along with many other Jews – felt he could avoid trouble by keeping his head down. However, by 1942 it was clear that this would not be possible; Amsterdam’s Jews were isolated and conspicuous, confined to certain parts of the city and forced to wear a yellow star, and roundups were increasingly common. In desperation, Otto Frank decided to move the family into the unused back rooms of their Prinsengracht premises, first asking some of his Dutch office staff if they would help him with the subterfuge – they bravely agreed. The Franks went into hiding in July 1942, along with a Jewish business partner and his wife and son, the van Pels (renamed the van Daans in the Diary). Their new “home” was separated from the rest of the building by a bookcase that doubled as a door. As far as everyone else was concerned, they had fled to Switzerland.
So began a two-year incarceration in the achterhuis, or rear house, and the two families were joined in November 1942 by a dentist friend, Fritz Pfeffer (Albert Dussel in the Diary), bringing the number of occupants to eight. Otto’s trusted office staff continued working in the front part of the building, regularly bringing supplies and news of the outside world. In her diary Anne Frank describes the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of the Secret Annex: the quarrels, frequent in such a claustrophobic