January 28, 2025:
NEW YORK (AP) — A full-scale replica of the secret annex where Anne Frank penned her famous diary opened in New York City on Monday (Jan. 27, 2025) as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The exhibit at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan represents the first time the annex has been completely recreated outside of Amsterdam, where the space is a central part of the Anne Frank House museum.
But while the original annex has been intentionally left empty, the New York reconstruction shows the five rooms as they would have looked while the Frank family and others lived in hiding.
The spaces are filled with furniture and possessions, including a reconstruction of the writing desk where Frank wrote her diary.
Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House, said furnishing the recreated space was important to tell Anne’s story in a new and immersive way, especially for those who may not get to visit the Amsterdam museum, which also houses Frank’s original diary.
“We very much hope that we will be able to to touch people’s hearts here, because education is the focus of this exhibition,” Leopold said at Monday’s opening. “And education starts with empathy — empathy with what happened here, what happened in Amsterdam during those years, what was done to Anne Frank.”
The Frank family hid with other Jews for two years in the attic of patriarch Otto Frank’s office in Amsterdam as the Nazi German army occupied the Netherlands during World War II.
They were eventually discovered in 1944 and sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was liberated by Soviet troops 80 years ago Monday. Anne and her older sister Margot died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Their father, Otto, was the only person from the annex to survive the Holocaust. After the war, he published his 15-year-old daughter’s diary, which is considered one of the most important works of the 20th century. Frank died in 1980 at the age of 91.
Hannah-Milena Elias, the granddaughter of Anne Frank’s cousin, Buddy Elias, said she found it emotional walking through the exhibit rooms.
“It is quite overwhelming and quite touching to see to see what a tiny space the families had to stay in and live for more than two years,” said the 29-year-old, who lives in Switzerland.
Her sibling, Leyb-Anouk Elias, hoped the exhibit would encourage visitors to reflect on what it means to face discrimination or be a minority today.
“History, unfortunately, is repeating itself in different ways,” the 27-year-old Berlin resident said. “We have to be very, very careful how to act and to do stuff against it, to not ever make this happen again.”
The New York exhibit, which runs through April 30, spans more than 7,500 square feet (696 square meters) and includes more than 100 photos and other artifacts — many never before displayed publicly, according to officials.
Among the items are Anne Frank’s first photo album and her handwritten poetry, as well as a replica of her famous diary. There’s also nearly 80 translated editions of her diary and even the Oscar won by Shelley Winters for the 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The installation is presented chronologically, tracing the Frank family’s life in Germany through the rise of the Nazi regime, the family’s flight to Amsterdam and their life in hiding and eventual capture.
Henry Byrne, a junior at Xavier, a Catholic high school in Manhattan, said learning about the family’s saga helped him grasp the enormity of the Holocaust.
“It taught me a lot about how just because you see one story, walk into these rooms and all the beds and the tables, that’s just one person’s life,” the 16-year-old said. “And there were millions that were lost.”
October 18, 2024:
AMSTERDAM (AP) — The annex where the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is heading to New York.
A full-scale replica of the rooms that form the heart of the Anne Frank House museum on one of Amsterdam’s historic canals is being built in the Netherlands and will be shipped across the Atlantic for a show titled “ Anne Frank The Exhibition” at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
“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 detailing the upcoming exhibition.
In July 1942, Anne Frank, then aged 13, her parents Otto and Edith, and her 16-year-old sister Margo went into hiding in the annex. They were joined a week later by the van Pels family — Hermann, Auguste and their 15-year-old son, Peter. Four months later, Fritz Pfeffer moved into the hiding place, also seeking to evade capture by the Netherlands’ Nazi German occupiers.
They stayed in the annex of rooms until they were discovered in 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Anne and her sister Margot were then moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in February 1945. Anne was 15.
Her father, Otto, the only person from the annex to survive the Holocaust, published Anne’s diary after the war and it became a publishing sensation around the world as a symbol of hope and resilience in the face of tyranny.
Leopold said the New York exhibit promises to be “an immersive, interactive, captivating experience” for visitors.
It opens on Jan. 27, 2025, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
While the faithfully rebuilt annex of rooms will be the heart of the exhibit, it also will trace the history of Anne’s family from their time in Germany, their move to the Netherlands and decision to go into hiding, to their discovery by Nazis, deportation, Anne’s death and the postwar decision by her father to publish her diary.
“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.”
The exhibition comes at a time of rising antisemitism and anger at the devastating war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that has now spread to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon following the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
“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.”
Anne’s diary will not be making the transatlantic trip.
“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 125 exhibits that are traveling from Amsterdam for the New York exhibition are photos, albums, artefacts such as one of the yellow stars Jews were ordered to wear in the occupied Netherlands, as well as the Best Supporting Actress Oscar won by Shelley Winters for her role in George Stevens’ 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
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