Anne Frank house

Anne Frank and her family fled to Amsterdam from their Germany home before going into hiding in July 1942 until the family's arrest in August 1944. If you have read The Diary of Anne Frank you will know that Anne Frank was a 13 year-old Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis during World War II. She wrote about her and her family's living situation while in hiding. In 1945, Anne Frank and her sister Margot, died of typhus in a concentration camp one month before the camp's liberation. Anne's father, Otto Frank, was the only member of his family to survive the concentration camp and later went back to their old hiding place to discover Anne had kept a diary. After reading this well-written account of their life in hiding, Otto Frank decided to publish his daughters diary making her dream of becoming an author reality.

Now, the hiding place the Frank's called home is a museum. Since its opening in 1960 thousands of visitors have come to experience the house were Anne Frank lived and wrote of her life in hiding. We were not allowed to take photos inside the house. But, photos cannot explain how small and uncomfortable this living space had to be for the Frank's and the two other families that lived and worked in this small space.

There were a few remarkable characteristics of the house that can only be experienced. Anne did a great job of explaining the make up of the house but until you are there you can only imagine the living situation. I'll do my best to explain...

The day we visited the Anne Frank house was a cold and rainy day. In the photos below we were bundled in jackets wishing we had brought gloves on our trip! We climbed up very narrow and steep stairs to get to the secret annex where the rooms were small with no carpet. The wooden slats that made up the floor creaked under our feet.

The windows in Anne's old room overlooked a canal. These windows were covered with wooden boards and draped with heavy black fabric which helped the family remain undetected by the Nazis's and nosy neighbors. With no heat in the sunless rooms the already cold and rainy day added to the darkness of the cold, damp carpetless rooms. At Otto Frank's request the rooms contained no furniture. There were scale models of what the house looked liked with furniture. However, we got the idea of how little space the families did have when furniture was added....

For more information about the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam please visit their website: www.annefrank.org

If you visit Amsterdam and only have time to go to the museum gift shop there is a ton of literature, posters, photos, etc. in many different languages.