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Take a look around and explore the Secret Annex where Anne Frank was in hiding for more than two years during World War II, and where she wrote her diary.
- Front Attic
The front attic: the observation post of the Secret Annex....
- Anne Frank
Anne Frank Her life, the diary, and the Secret Annex. Who...
- The History of The Secret Annex
The Secret Annex of Anne Frank. The annex where Anne and her...
- How Unique Was The Secret Annex? People in Hiding in The Occupied Netherlands
According to Abel Herzberg, one of the first Dutch authors...
- Toilet
Photo collection: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam /...
- Front Office
At some point or other, Anne wrote about a nervous Kugler,...
- The Warehouse
The warehouse workers were not to know that there were...
- Otto's Private Office
The building had thin walls and floors, and the people in...
- Front Attic
What inspires Anne to write a book about her time in the Secret Annex? On 28 March 1944, the people in hiding in the Secret Annex heard an appeal on the radio from Dutch minister Bolkestein, who had fled to London because of the war.
The Secret Annex of Anne Frank. The annex where Anne and her family went into hiding dates from 1739. In that year, more than a hundred years after the construction of Prinsengracht 263, the previous annex had been demolished to be replaced by a new, larger annex. Later on, another renovation took place.
- Overview
- Background
- Life in hiding and capture
- Diary: compilation and publication
The Diary of a Young Girl, journal by Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager who chronicled her family’s two years (1942–44) in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. The book was first published in 1947—two years after Anne’s death in a concentration camp—and later became a classic of war literature.
In 1933 Anne’s family—her father, Otto; her mother, Edith; and her older sister, Margot—moved to Amsterdam from Germany following the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1940 the Netherlands was invaded by Germany, which began to enact various anti-Jewish measures, one of which required Anne and her sister to enroll in an all-Jewish school the following year....
Over the next two years, Anne wrote faithfully in the diary, which she came to consider a friend, addressing many of the entries to “Dear Kitty.” In the journal and later notebooks, Anne recounted the day-to-day life within the annex. The close quarters and sparse supplies led to various arguments among the inhabitants, and the outgoing Anne came to find the conditions stifling. Heightening tensions was the ever-present concern that they would be discovered. However, many entries involve typical adolescent issues—jealousy toward her sister; annoyance with others, especially her mother; and an increasing sexual awareness. Anne wrote candidly about her developing body, and she experienced a brief romance with Peter van Pels. She also discussed her hopes for the future, which included becoming a journalist or a writer. In addition to the diary, Anne penned several short stories and compiled a list of “beautiful sentences” from other works.
After learning of plans to collect diaries and other papers to chronicle people’s wartime experiences, Anne began to rework her journal for possible publication as a novel entitled Het Achterhuis (“The Secret Annex”). She notably created pseudonyms for all the inhabitants, eventually adopting Anne Robin as her alias. Pfeffer—whom Anne had come to dislike as the two often argued over the use of a desk—was named Albert Dussel, the surname of which is German for “idiot.”
Of the eight people in the secret annex, only Otto Frank survived the war. He subsequently returned to Amsterdam, where Gies gave him various documents she had saved from the annex. Among the papers was Anne’s diary, though some of the notebooks were missing, notably most of those from 1943. To fulfill Anne’s dream of publication, Otto began sorting through her writings. The original red-and-white checkered journal became known as the “A” version, while her revised entries, written on loose sheets of paper, were known as the “B” version. The diary that Otto ultimately compiled was the “C” version, which omitted approximately 30 percent of her entries. Much of the excluded text was sexual-related or concerned Anne’s difficulties with her mother.
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After Otto was unable to find a publisher, the work was given to historian Jan Romein, who was so impressed that he wrote about the diary in a front-page article for the newspaper Het Parool in 1946. The resulting attention led to a publishing deal with Contact, and Het Achterhuis was released on June 25, 1947. An immediate best seller in the Netherlands, the work began to appear elsewhere. In 1952 the first American edition was published under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; it included an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. The work was eventually translated into more than 65 languages, and it was later adapted for the stage and screen. All proceeds went to a foundation established in Anne’s honour. In 1995, 15 years after Otto’s death, a new English version of the Diary was published. It contained material that had been previously omitted. In an effort to extend the copyright date—which was to begin expiring in various European countries in 2016—Otto was added as a coauthor in 2015.
Anne Frank's diary and her stories are the main source for the daily schedule in the Secret Annex. The B version and the stories do require the caveat that there is a strong compositional element involved.
Anne writes about the books she received for her birthday. These included the two volumes of Nederlandsche Sagen en Legenden ('Dutch Sagas and Legends') by Josef Cohen. She gave volume 1 to a neighbour girl before she went into hiding, who gave it to the Anne Frank House seventy years later.
Apr 23, 2019 · The Diary of Anne Frank is the first, and sometimes only, exposure many people have to the history of the Holocaust. Meticulously handwritten during her two years in hiding, Anne's diary remains one of the most widely read works of nonfiction in the world.
