New York to host replica exhibition of Anne Frank’s hidden annex

A central feature of the Anne Frank House museum, set on one of Amsterdam’s historic canals, are the very rooms where the young Jewish diarist and her family hid from Nazi occupiers. Now a full-scale replica of this hidden annex is heading across the Atlantic.

“For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House will present what I would call a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam. To immerse visitors in a full-scale, meticulous recreation of the secret annex. Those rooms where Anne Frank, her parents, her sister, four other Jews, spent more than two years hiding to evade Nazi capture,” Anne Frank House director Ronald Leopold told The Associated Press in an interview about the forthcoming exhibition.

Constructed to mirror the actual annex where Anne penned her famous diary, the replica invites visitors to step into the world she inhabited, experiencing the cramped quarters and the realities of life in hiding.

A quick reminder of Anne Frank’s story: in July 1942, a 13-year-old Anne, along with parents Otto and Edith, and her 16-year-old sister Margot, sought refuge in the hidden annex in Amsterdam. Shortly thereafter, the family was joined by the van Pels family – Hermann, Auguste, and their 15-year-old son, Peter. Four months later, Fritz Pfeffer also entered the annex, seeking to escape the Nazi occupiers in the Netherlands.

The group remained in the annex for two years, living in constant fear of discovery. In 1944, their hiding place was compromised, leading to their deportation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Anne and Margot were later transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they succumbed to typhus in February 1945, just weeks before the camp’s liberation. Anne was only 15 years old.

Otto Frank, the sole survivor from the annex, published Anne’s diary after the war, transforming it into a global phenomenon.

Opening on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the exhibition commemorates the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Leopold emphasised that it promises to be “an immersive, interactive, captivating experience” for visitors.

At its core will be a meticulously reconstructed annex, but the exhibit will also explore the history of Anne’s family – from their life in Germany and relocation to the Netherlands to their decision to hide, their eventual discovery by the Nazis, deportation, and Anne’s tragic death, as well as Otto’s decision to publish her diary after the war.

“What we try to achieve with this exhibition is that people, our visitors will learn about Anne not just as a victim, but through the multifaceted lens of a life, as a teenage girl, as a writer, as a symbol of resilience and of strength. We hope that they will contemplate the context that shaped her life,” Leopold told The Associated Press.

For the Anne Frank House director, the exhibition takes on particular importance amidst a rise in antisemitism and widespread anger at the devastating war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza – which has now expanded to Lebanon – following the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October last year.

“With ever fewer, fewer, survivors in our communities, with devastating antisemitism and other forms of group hatred on the rise in the U.S. but also across the world, we feel … our responsibility as Anne Frank House has never been greater,” Leopold said. “And this exhibition is also in part a response to that responsibility to educate people to stand against antisemitism, to stand against group hatred.”

One key object will not be making the trip stateside, however: Anne’s diary itself.

“We unfortunately will not be able to travel with the diary, writings, the notebooks and the loose sheets that Anne wrote. They are too fragile, too vulnerable to travel,” Leopold said.

Among the 125 items travelling from Amsterdam for the New York exhibition will be photographs, albums, artefacts – including one of the yellow stars that Jews were mandated to wear in occupied Netherlands – as well as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress won by Shelley Winters for her role in the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank.

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Anne Frank The Exhibition will run from 27 January-30 April 2025 at the Center for Jewish History.