Anne Frank House

The former hiding place, where Anne Frank wrote her diary. The Anne Frank House museum tells the history of the 8 people in hiding and those who helped them during the war.

Secret Annex

For more than two years, Anne Frank lived secretively with the other people in hiding in the back part of her father's office building at Prinsengracht 263.

The Secret Annex has been preserved in its authentic state. The front part of the building and the offices where the Helpers worked have been restored to the style and ambiance of the war years.

Inside the museum

Quotations from the diary, photographs, films and original objects - belonging to the people in hiding and those who helped them - all serve to illustrate the events that occurred at this location.

Anne's orignal diary is on display in the museum along with some of her other notebooks.

The story

On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father's office.

For 2 years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo, which had been tipped off, in 1944.

The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne's mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne's diary hidden away.

Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus a month before the war ended.

Anne's father survived Auschwitz and published Anne's diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book has been translated into some 30 languages.

Location

The Anne Frank House is located in the UNESCO World Heritage Canal Belt of Amsterdam, at Prinsengracht 263-267. The entrance to the museum is around the corner, at Westermarkt 20, near the Westerkerk.