Anne Frank Huis

Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Miep Gies retrieved Anne Frank’s diary from the Secret Annex on the day after the raid, in August 1944. She kept it unread in a drawer for the remainder of the war without knowing whether the Franks had survived. When Otto Frank returned in 1945 as the only survivor of the eight people who had hidden in the Annex, Miep gave him the diary intact. Otto Frank spent the rest of his life – he lived until 1980 – working to publish and promote the diary and the story it contained. The book has now been published in over 70 languages and is among the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust. Miep Gies died in 2010 at age 100. She always insisted she was not a hero; she said she had simply done what needed to be done.

The Anne Frank House at Prinsengracht 263 to 267 in Amsterdam preserves the building and the Secret Annex where Anne Frank, her family, and four others hid from the Nazis between July 1942 and August 1944. The entrance is through the front of the canal house that was Otto Frank’s business; the Annex is accessed through a hidden door concealed behind a moveable bookcase. Eight people lived in these rooms for 25 months: the Frank family, the van Pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer.

Visiting

Tickets are online only. There are no walk-up tickets at any time of year. The official website (annefrankhuis.nl) sells timed entry slots that sell out weeks in advance during peak season. Daily capacity is limited to protect the intimate atmosphere of the space. Book as early as possible.

Photography inside is strictly prohibited.

The tour is self-guided through a sequence of rooms. The Annex itself has been deliberately maintained without furniture, following Otto Frank’s wish after the war. The rooms are small – the space that eight people lived in for over two years – and the combination of physical smallness and what happened here is more affecting than any amount of advance preparation conveys.

Outside the Annex, the museum section displays original diary pages, photographs, and contextual material about the occupation of Amsterdam and the fate of Dutch Jews during the war.

Context

Of the approximately 107,000 Dutch Jews deported during the Nazi occupation, about 75 percent were killed: a higher proportion than in any other Western European country. The betrayal of the Annex’s hiding place was never definitively established, though investigations have continued for decades. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945, weeks before the camp was liberated.

The Jordaan

The museum sits in the Jordaan, a 17th-century neighbourhood of narrow streets and canal houses that is one of the most characterful parts of Amsterdam. Spending an hour walking the neighbourhood before or after the museum provides context for what daily life in this city looked like and how the canal houses are structured.

Cafe Papeneiland on Prinsengracht, a few minutes’ walk from the museum, has been in operation since 1642 and is the oldest brown cafe (bruincafe) in Amsterdam. Coffee and apple tart after a visit to the museum.