Signing

In the presence of Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima of the Netherlands an agreement is signed by the executive director of the Anne Frank House, Ronald Leopold, and the Secretary of Education of Sao Paulo, Herman Voorwald.

The executive director of the Anne Frank House, Ronald Leopold, after the signing of the agreement.

School Protection Programme

The Ministry of Education of the state of São Paolo has recently started a large-scale School Protection Programme with the appointment of more than 2500 Mediation Teachers. It is an inspiring, unique project, and the Anne Frank project fits seamlessly into it. The ultimate goal is to reach the 10% of most socially vulnerable schools in the state of São Paulo with the project: over 500 schools in the state of São Paulo as a whole.

Scale

Never before in the history of the Anne Frank House a project on this scale was carried out. This has only been possible thanks to the support of the state of São Paolo. Its also exceptional in an international perspective.

The collection includes a number of unique letters and documents concerning Otto Frank’s attempts to emigrate to the USA with his family before they went into hiding. The Anne Frank House was able to acquire the collection thanks to a contribution from the BankGiro Lottery.

The diary of Anne Frank became especially popular in the USA after it was adapted into a stage play. Otto Frank, the only one of the eight people in hiding in the ‘Secret Annexe’ to survive the war, was closely involved in the creation of the play. In the correspondence between Otto Frank and the actor Joseph Schildkraut, Otto answers questions that Schildkraut has in preparation for his role. The correspondence forms an important source for the history of the creation of the play and its success in the USA, and provides a wealth of information on the Frank family and the period in hiding. The collection also includes photos of the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer (the other people in hiding in the Secret Annexe), and the helpers Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, Bep Voskuijl and Miep and Jan Gies.

Emigration attempts

The estate of Joseph Schildkraut also contains letters and documents of Otto Frank that Nathan Straus, a good friend of Otto Frank from the USA, gave to Schildkraut to help him prepare for his role. In a letter from 1936, Otto writes to Nathan that his children are doing well, but that the threat of the Nazism is also tangible in the Netherlands. There are also various documents, including a letter from Otto to Nathan from 1941, which concern Otto Frank’s attempts to emigrate to the USA with his family. These letters and documents are the bitter testimony to the hopeless situation in which the Frank family found itself.

Valuable addition

Among its other activities, Anne Frank House curates the Otto Frank archive. The archive contains letters on the publication of the diary and the creation of stage plays and films, correspondence of Otto Frank with readers of the diary, documents connected with legal actions against neo-Nazis and documentation on the history of the Anne Frank House. The collection from the estate of Joseph Schildkraut is a valuable addition to the Anne Frank House’s archives.

BankGiro Lottery

The Otto Frank collection that has been acquired originates from the estate of Joseph Schildkraut, whose widow, Leonora Schildkraut, consigned it to the auction house, Doyle New York. With the mediation of Doyle New York, Leonora Schildkraut withdrew the collection from the auction, and the Anne Frank House was able to acquire it thanks to a contribution from the BankGiro Lottery.

A short film about the welcoming of our one millionth visitor,

The large number of visitors is partly thanks to the museum’s long opening hours and the possibility to buy entrance tickets online. In 2013 the museum will again be open from 9 AM to 9 PM (10 PM on Saturdays) from 15 March to 15 September, and from 9 AM to 10 PM every day in July and August. Increasing numbers of people are buying their entrance tickets on the internet.

Umbrella

Many visitors come to the Anne Frank House during vacation periods, often with queues as a result. On rainy days like today visitors can borrow one of our umbrellas for shelter. Additionally, the free WiFi hotspot enables them to prepare themselves for their visit. This is especially popular with foreign visitors.

Exhibition

Photos in the exhibition show a vivacious and curious girl who at first lives a normal life: Anne on her father’s lap, at the beach with her sister Margot, with friends at an ice rink, with classmates at the Montessori school. But the German occupation of Holland and anti-Jewish measures change her life drastically. The Frank family has to go into hiding, and Anne is forced to grow up quickly. In one of the letters in the exhibition, to her father, Anne writes: “You can and may regard me as fourteen, but with all the trouble I’ve become older.” In hiding in the ‘Secret Annexe’, Anne develops into a talented writer. On 13 June 1944 she writes in her diary: “Another birthday has gone by, so I’m now fifteen.” Shortly afterwards Anne, her family and the four other people in hiding with them are betrayed and arrested by the Nazis.

Filmed impression of the exhibition on YouTube

New acquisitions

The exhibition includes a number of new acquisitions. There is a tea set, for example, and  the book 'Dutch Sagas and Myths', in which Anne wrote 'a memento of Anne Frank', given by Anne to her friend Toosje Kupers just before she went into hiding. The book ‘Basic Principles of Botany’ is also on display. Anne was given the book by her parents for her fifteenth, and last, birthday. On the flyleaf she wrote her name, the date, and ‘the Secret Annexe’.

Anne's tenth birthday. Anne is the second from the left, Hanneli Goslar is the fourth girl from the left. (© AFS/AFF)

Hanneli Goslar

One of the photos in the exhibition shows Anne on her tenth birthday, arm in arm with Hanneli Goslar and other young friends on the Merwedeplein square. Hanneli, now 83 years old, talked of her friendship with Anne at the opening, as she also does in a film on show in the exhibition. The two friends first met at nursery school, and spoke to each other for the last time in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. She was fifteen years old.

The online exhibit Anne Frank: her life, her diary, her legacy places the story of Anne Frank in the context of Nazi Germany and the Second World War. It has been specially created for the Google Cultural Institute.

A unique aspect of this project is that, alongside material from the Anne Frank collection, it also shows images from other important archives, including those of  Life Photo Collection, Yad Vashem, the Imperial War Museums and Getty Images, who are also partners of the Google Cultural Institute.

Partnership

The partnership with the Google Cultural Institute is important for the Anne Frank House because it helps to fulfil its mission: to tell the story of Anne Frank worldwide. With this exhibit the Anne Frank House hopes to reach an even wider and younger audience.

Special items

Some of the special items in the online exhibit are:

- the only moving images of Anne Frank;
- a video extract in which Anne Frank’s childhood friend Hanneli Goslar speaks of her last meeting with Anne in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Hanneli will open the new exhibition on Anne Frank in the Anne Frank House on 11 October 2012);
- the last film images of Miep Gies, the helper of Anne Frank and the people in hiding with her, in the Anne Frank House as she places personal documents in a display case (which you can also see on www.youtube.com/annefrank);
- photos from the Life Photo Collection of a group of American students visiting the Anne Frank House in 1961;
- colour photos from the Life Photo Collection of the Nazi era in Germany and the invasion of the Netherlands by German troops in 1940.

Anne and Zef is based partially on Anne Frank's diary and presents two children who refuse to give up in spite of extreme conditions. In Anne and Zef an Albanian boy Zef Bunga meets Amsterdam's Anne Frank after his death. Both had to go into hiding for three years, she because she was Jewish and he because of a vendetta.

Floris Verkerk, the actor who play-acts Zef, received the Golden Cricket award in 2009 for ‘the most impressive stage performance of the year’.

National press quote (NRC Handelsblad):

‘Theatre creator Ad de Bont combines two, world stories ingeniously. [...] Gradually, with a great deal of compassion for delayed longing, De Bont allows them to fall in love. Headlong, astute dialogue keeps everyone on their toes. There is the delight of thinking for oneself, of enjoying the power of freedom of speech. A self-evident conclusion in the hereafter, a moot topic during life. [...] More insistent than ever, De Bont is as good as his word. First death, then love. Forever after.’

More information.

On 4 August 1944, everyone in the Secret Annex is arrested. Someone has betrayed them. They are deported first to the Westerbork transit camp, and then on to Auschwitz. Otto Frank is the only person from the Secret Annex to survive the camps...

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Two years

In July 1942, the people in hiding are unaware that they will spend more than two years in the Secret Annex. All that time, they will not be able to go outside and they will have to share the darkness and dampness of the hiding place, continually fearful of being discovered…

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Otto returns to Amsterdam

After the liberation of Auschwitz, Otto returns to Amsterdam. On the journey back he hears of the death of his wife Edith. He hopes that his daughters Margot and Anne are still alive, but then he learns that they too have not survived the war. The helper Miep Gies gives him Anne’s diary papers, which she has kept in her desk drawer since the arrest of the people in hiding. In the diary Otto reads that after the war Anne wanted to publish a book about her time in hiding. She had even rewritten a large part of her original diary. Otto Frank hesitates at first, but he finally decides to fulfil his daughter’s wish.

Newspaper article: ‘A child’s voice’

Otto Frank types out Anne’s diary, and it finds its way via a number of different contacts to Jan and Annie Romein, both historians. Jan Romein is deeply impressed, and writes an article about Anne’s diary that appears on the front page of the Dutch newspaper Het Parool on 3 April 1946. ‘For me, all the hideousness of fascism is embodied in this apparently insignificant diary of a child, more than in all the Nuremberg court documents put together’, he writes. A number of publishers become interested. ‘The Secret Annex: Diary letters from 14 June 1942 to 1 August 1944' is published by Contact publishers of Amsterdam on 25 June 1947 in an edition of 3,000 copies.

Deep thoughts and feelings

Otto Frank later recalled what he felt when he read the diary for the first time: ‘I began to read slowly, only a few pages each day, more would have been impossible, as I was overwhelmed by painful memories. For me, it was a revelation. There was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.'

Worldwide

After the first Dutch edition in 1947, Anne’s diary is published in Germany and France in 1950. An English translation follows in 1952. The book has currently been translated into seventy languages.

The red checked diary was not really a surprise. Anne had chosen it the day before in the bookshop around the corner from their house on the Merwedeplein square. Anne began the diary with her life story, and with profiles of her classmates. A few weeks after her thirteenth birthday, on 6 July 1942, Anne went into hiding in the ‘secret annexe’ at her father’s business on the Prinsengracht canal. Her diary was the first thing she packed. It became her best friend, and would remain so for over two years.

Anne’s Amsterdam

The Anne Frank House has recently launched the mobile app Anne’s Amsterdam, which you can use to explore the history of Anne Frank and her contemporaries at thirty locations around Amsterdam. You see stories, films and photos from the past at the same locations today. On and around the Merwedeplein square you can see the only moving images of Anne Frank, an interview with her neighbour and friend Hanneli Goslar and a photo of the Blankevoort bookshop where Anne bought her red checked diary. You can pick up the images and stories and collect them in a digital album on your mobile phone. The items you pick up are linked to the website Anne Frank’s Amsterdam, where you can find more information.

Go to the Annual Report.

With Anne’s Amsterdam you can view personal stories, film footage and unique photographs from the past at the same location today. There are images of Anne Frank and her friends on the Merwedeplein, German troops entering the city on the Rokin and the raid on the Jonas Daniël Meijerplein. This link between the past and the present enables you to see the city in a different way by which events of the war come to life. You can collect the stories, films and photos for your digital album on your telephone. You can also send your items per e-mail and encourage others to use the App via Facebook and Twitter.

In depth information

The items collected link to the website Anne Frank’s Amsterdam. A visual timeline gives in depth information and context. Personal stories, not previously published on the internet, from Jewish and non-Jewish eyewitnesses give a view of life during the occupation. The period before and after the occupation are also discussed, placing Amsterdam’s war time history in a broader perspective.

German soldiers being welcomed by Dutch Nazis on the Rokin (16 May 1940) blended into the street view of today.

Presentation and cooperation

The Anne Frank House, Repudo and LBi combined their historical, technological and creative forces in the joint development of the App. It is a gift to the Anne Frank House from Repudo and LBi, contributing to an innovative way of informing and involving the public in Amsterdam’s history.

More questions...

Questions and answers.

Posters

From 2 to 8 May there will be poster campaign in the city of Amsterdam to introduce the App. Cinema Tuschinski made the Anne’s Amsterdam campaign financially possible by gifting the proceeds from the auction of their old carpet to the Anne Frank House. The wartime history of Amsterdam’s oldest cinema can be found in the App as well as on the website.

With this App you can collect thirty items in various locations in the city, such as places where Anne and her friends played, where they grew up and where they went to school. Because you find these items at specific locations, you will experience the city like you have never seen before. You will see personal stories, footage and unique war photos from the past as you are on today’s street. It is a powerful way in which the past and present come together.    

Anne’s Amsterdam is available for download for the iOS, Android and WP7 in Dutch, English and German versions.

Anne Frank’s Amsterdam

The mobile App is a part of Anne Frank’s Amsterdam, a multimedia project that is about Amsterdam, Anne Frank and the Jewish community. Anne Frank’s Amsterdam is available in Dutch, English and German. Making the site available in other languages will create a wider audience of viewer interest. Moreover, it will enable English and German speakers to learn more about Amsterdam, especially the stories and events surrounding the city during World War II.

The creation of the Anne Frank’s Amsterdam App is a gift presented to the Anne Frank House from Repudo and LBi.

More questions....

Questions and answers.

Eva Schloss-Geiringer

The exhibition places the story of the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer in the context of the approximately 410,000 Jews who fled Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1941. After Hitler came to power in 1933, a large section of the German Jewish population left their fatherland. Between 1933 and 1941, approximately 280,000 Jews fled Nazi Germany and 130,000 left Austria, which had been annexed by Hitler: half of the total Jewish community of these countries. Several tens of thousands arrived in the Netherlands. For many of them it was only a stop on a longer journey.

The Frank and Van Pels families and Fritz Pfeffer also tried to move on from the Netherlands. On 24 December 1937 Edith Frank, Anne’s mother, wrote in a letter to a friend: 'We too might move on'. The Frank family tried to find a safe refuge in Britain, the USA and Cuba, the Van Pels family in the USA, and Fritz Pfeffer in Australia, Aruba and Chile. None of their attempts succeeded. They were betrayed, and sent to concentration camps. Otto Frank was the only one to survive.

The international travelling exhibition Anne Frank - A History for Today places the story of Anne Frank against the backdrop of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The heart of the exhibition consists of quotations from Anne Frank’s diary and the Frank family’s photographs. This is accompanied  by other personal narratives about the consequences of discrimination and persecution. One of the stories depicted is that of the Finnish-Jewish Hanna Eckhart, who survived the Holocaust. Additional panels address the theme Discrimination & Finland Nowadays.

Guides                                                                                                                                   

The exhibition is especially directed at young people. In all ten cities in Finland, youngsters serve as guides to the exhibition. A two-day training prepares them for this responsibility. They learn about the content and background of the exhibition, the best way to present the information to their peers and how to make contemporary topics discussable. 

Partners 

The exhibition Anne Frank - A History for Today is shown throughout the entire world. Each year there are more than 150 venues. The worldwide tour is co-ordinated by the Anne Frank House, but the realisation is placed in the hands of local partners. In Finland, the Anne Frank House is collaborating with the Helsinki City Library, the University of Helsinki, the Peace Education Initiative and the Finnish Jewish Community. 

Funding                                                                                                                               

This Finnish tour has been made ​​possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Ministry of Education, the Dutch Embassy, ​​the Israeli Embassy and the transport company DHL

The exhibition portrays Anne Frank’s life story. Most of the images are from the Frank family’s photo albums. Chronological chapters connect the story of the Frank family to the 'bigger history': the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. The heart of the exhibition is the ‘Gedankenraum’ – a spatial impression of the Secret Annexe in Amsterdam where the Frank family spent more than two years in hiding. In this ‘Space to Reflect’, visitors can hear excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary.

Current Events Modules

The exhibition concludes with a number of multimedia modules that illustrate the present-day relevance of this historical period using four themes: identity, group thinking, discrimination and commitment.

Guided Tours by Young People

After the debut in the Bundestag, the exhibition will tour Germany in the coming years. Young people serve as the guides at each location. In a two-day training, these youngsters learn about the exhibition’s content and background, the best way to present the information to their peers and how to make contemporary issues discussable.

Cooperation

The Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin and Anne Frank House in Amsterdam created this exhibition in cooperation with the Dutch design firm Tinker Imagineers in Utrecht. Germany’s Federal Ministry of Youth and Family Affairs and the Aktion Mensch Fund provided the financial support for this project.

Youth Conference

Directly after the opening of this new exhibition, a three-day conference on remembrance commences with over one hundred young people, teachers and historians participating from twenty countries. They will address the question of how to actively involve youngsters in educational projects about the Second World War and the Holocaust and the importance of this for contemporary society.

Eva Schloss is one of the co-founders of the Anne Frank Trust UK and since 1990 has been a trustee of the charity. Eva has worked tirelessly since the publication of her first book Eva’s Story in 1988 to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to countless people, in the UK and around the world. She has also been recognised with two honorary doctorates from universities. Each time she tells her story she adds a new insight or perspective. 

Eva was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. With her parents Erich and Fritzi and brother Heinz she fled from the Nazis to the Netherlands in 1938. The Geiringer family settled in Amsterdam and lived on the Merwedeplein 46, opposite the Frank family. Heinz Geiringer, like Margot Frank, received a summons in July 1942 to report for transport to a "labour camp" in Germany. The next day the family went into hiding. They were betrayed in May 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Erich died on a death march, Heinz died in Mauthausen concentration camp. Fritzi and Eva were liberated in Auschwitz. They returned to Amsterdam in June 1945, in the same transport as Otto Frank, who had lost his wife Edith and daughters Margot and Anne. In 1953 Otto and Fritzi got married and settled in Basel, Switzerland. Eva moved to London in the early 1950s and married Zvi Schloss. They have three children and five grandchildren.

The large number of visitors is partly the result of the museum’s long opening hours and the possibility to buy entrance tickets online. In 2012 the museum will again be open from 9 AM to 9 PM (10 PM on Saturdays) from 15 March to 15 September, and from 9 AM to 10 PM every day in July and August. Increasing numbers of people are buying their entrance tickets online.

Many visitors visit the Anne Frank House during vacation periods often resulting in queues. Recently visitors with a smartphone can prepare themselves for their visit to the museum: the Anne Frank House is providing visitors waiting in the queue with free WiFi access to its website http://m.annefrank.org/.This is particularly popular with foreign visitors.