ANNE FRANK'S HOUSE-HOME

Incredible museum, poignant memory of a teenager who made us understand the horror of war better than anyone else...

It was here that the Frank family found refuge after fleeing Germany in 1933, and where they lived in total clandestinity from 1941 onwards, surrounded by some friends, including the Van Daan couple, who were also threatened with death due to the daily roundups of Jews. The account of this existence hidden from human eyes, recorded day by the young Anne Frank in her moving diary, will travel the world and become the symbol of murdered innocence. Because it ended tragically on August 4, 1944, after the Frank and their companions in misfortune, a total of eight people, had been arrested on anonymous denunciation and deported to the death camps. Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, and only Otto, the father, survived. It is to recall this tragic destiny, but also to respond to strong popular pressure, that this house was saved from demolition and remained, for the most part, intact, as if frozen on the threshold of an impassable moment of horror.

Open to the public since 1960, the house is divided by an inner courtyard, with the voorhuis, on the facade, and bought it at the back. It was therefore on the ^2nd and ^3rd floors of the purchase that Otto Frank set up a makeshift hiding place, consisting of three rooms and an attic that could be accessed through a rotating library. At night, all the windows were covered with black canvas, a practice imposed by the Germans on the people of Amsterdam so that the Allies could not orient themselves. The absolute destitution of the place reinforces the feeling of emptiness and absence of its last occupants. In Anne Frank's room, on the faded tapestries, you can still see some photographs of movie stars cut out of the magazines of the time, small windows on the dream and innocence in a brutal world in the process of being lost. The Van Daan family lived on the upper floor. A footbridge, installed after the war, leads to the front house, the headquarters of the Anne Frank Foundation for the fight against racism, which contains various documents and photographs on this theme in several rooms. The girl's diary is available in several languages. This memorial museum has gained immeasurable importance over time, and on average it has the longest queue (in size and not in duration, fortunately) of all museums in the Netherlands. A moving place....