When visiting Amsterdam, I booked a visit to Anne Frank’s Huis, there were several original items that have been kept from the house. The staircase was narrow in parts and the steps were small and it makes you reflect on the life the Franks lived for two years in an attic above a shop. The museum has an audio guide which allows you to have a self-guided tour and in many rooms there are video’s and images with information to follow the journey.
Background:
Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank, was born on June the 12th in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, to a mother named Edith and father named Otto. Anne had an older sister Margot who was born in 1926. Anne came from a Jewish family under the Nazi regime, following this Otto Frank, a businessman by occupation up and moved his family to the Netherlands in 1933 to escape persecution.
The Frank family lived, worked and attended school in the Netherlands until 1940 when the Nazi’s invaded the Netherlands. Otto Frank was the only survivor in his family and passed in 1981 aged 91, Edith Frank passed from starvation in the concentration camp and both Margot and Anne fell ill and died from typhus which is a bacterial disease spread usually from fleas and mites whilst living in the camp.
This blog post only scratches the surface of the ordeal the Franks and others experienced and there are so many notable people who had assisted in keeping them safe such as, Miep and Jan Gies. The dots on this map represent up to 10 Jewish people living in Amsterdam in this period.
I took so much away from my visit to the museum and was reminded about how important it is to document history as Anne’s thirteen year old self gave us an insight to her day to day. What stood out to me was the quote on a bookmark I bought. Anne became so much more than what she probably could have imagined when she was writing her diary entries and there is so much more in depth research into the war surrounding Anne’s life and informative resources to aid you in your research.
A bittersweet contrast, her life was taken from her in an unjust way but now the world knows and remembers her name.
Visiting Tips:
- Leave at least an hour for your visit.
- Booking can only be made via the website: https://www.annefrank.org/en/ and can be bought up to six weeks in advance.
- There’s a lovely small gift store at the end of the museum that has notepads, stationary, bookmarks and books available to purchase, the shop only accepted card transactions.
- If you can’t make it to Amsterdam the museum has an online virtual tour!