Anne Frank House

From the street there is nothing to see, and that was the point. Eight people lived behind this front for two years, and the business downstairs carried on as usual.

Canal houses in Amsterdam are deep. Many have a second building at the back, across a small courtyard, which cannot be seen from the street. In Dutch it is called the achterhuis, the house behind.

Otto Frank ran a small company from this address, selling pectin for making jam. In July 1942, when his daughter Margot was called up for a German labour camp, the family disappeared into the rooms at the back. Another family and an eighth person joined them. The way in was a door hidden behind a hinged bookcase.

They stayed for 761 days. During working hours they could not run a tap or walk about, because the warehousemen below did not know they were there. Four of Otto Frank’s staff did know, and brought food, books and news. Anne was thirteen when she went in. She wrote in a diary her father had given her for her birthday, and then rewrote it, hoping to publish a book after the war.

On 4 August 1944 the police came. How they found the hiding place has never been established. Everyone in the annex was deported. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen early in 1945, at fifteen. Only Otto came back. One of the helpers, Miep Gies, had kept the diary, and gave it to him.