A stay in Amsterdam should definitely include a trip to the Anne Frank House, which is open every day of the year except for Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement, regarded as the most important of the Jewish holidays. This historic landmark is a museum which just underwent a major renovation (in 2008) which included the installation of a climate-control system, to help with the fact that it now receives over one million visitors a year from all over the globe.
The Anne Frank House is the site of the Secret Annex, known in Dutch as the ‘Achterhuis’ (Back-house), where Anne Frank wrote her famous Diary and hid from the Nazis along with Otto Frank, Edith Frank-Hollander and their other daughter Margot since July of 1942. In the small space of the annex they were later joined by Mr. and Mrs. Daan, their son Peter and Mr. Dussel. The impression to outsiders was that the house was not being used. They all lived there during World War Two, until being betrayed and deported to the concentration camps where Anne and her sister tragically died of typhus just three weeks at Bergen-Belsen before the liberation by the British Army.
The Diary of Anne Frank was found after the war by Miep Gies, one of the helpers and it was given to Otto Frank, the only one of the 8 in the group that survived. 1947 marked the first appearance of a Dutch edition of the Diary and the original first Diary is now carefully housed within the museum. Additionally, the 59 photos that Anne put up on the her wall have all been carefully restored and protected from fluctuations in temperature, preserving a piece of the world from Anne’s special eyes for generations to come.
- Anne Frank
The queue that forms for admission to the Anne Frank House can be quite long, so one important tip would be to buy your tickets online and make a reservation for your visit here. There are special considerations for group visits, including a separate entrance for your tour. It is located in Central Amsterdam; from Centraal Station take the tram numbers 13 or 17, or the buses 170, 171 or 172 to the Westermarkt stop, and walk to the Prinsengracht canal on your right. The Anne Frank House is number 263 and it opens at 9:00 in the morning. Children up to the age of 9 are admitted free , tickets for those from 10 to 17 cost 4 euro and adults are 8,50 euros. Their telephone number is +31 (0)20-5567100.
Once there, visitors can also see the Anne Frank Tree as it was recently saved by from being cut down. It is featured in the Diary and to many, a symbol of hope as well as a living monument. While the horse-chestnut tree is unfortunately diseased, it now has a supporting structure that will keep it up for a period of 5 to 15 years.
While there are no guided tours of the museum available, there are guidebooks at the entrance in Dutch, English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian and Chinese. Note the fact that no cameras are allowed inside - both to protect the artifacts within and the deeply personal emotional experiences had by many who visit. In the words of the organization that maintains the museum, “We tell Anne Frank’s story to the world as a warning of the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination, and as an assertion of the values of freedom, equal rights and democracy.”
-Valery Klaw-Groten for ExplorerPod.com
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