ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Why are the rooms in the Anne Frank House empty of furniture?
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl living in Amsterdam who went into hiding with seven other people to escape from the Nazis during World War II. They all took refuge in a hidden annex of her father’s business premises, and were helped by some of his employees, until they were betrayed and deported to concentration camps. The only survivor was Anne’s father Otto, who returned to Amsterdam after the war and arranged for his daughter’s diary to be published as a book, which has been translated into 70 languages and has sold over 30 million copies in more than 60 countries. The diary has also been the basis for films and plays.
In 1960 the house in Amsterdam where the family had taken refuge was opened to the public as a museum. The main house and the hidden annex can both be visited.
Now, for the first time in history, the Anne Frank House is presenting a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam to immerse visitors in a full-scale recreation of the Annex, where Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and four other Jewish inhabitants spent two years hiding to evade Nazi capture. The exhibition is presented by the Anne Frank House and hosted by the Center for Jewish History in New York City. It contains more than 100 original collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, including several never-before-exhibited artifacts.
The exhibition opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2025, to mark the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, and is scheduled to close on April 30, 2025.
In 2016 we visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and spoke with Annemarie Bekker of the Communications Department. So that you can learn more about the museum, its history and contents, this week we are offering you that interview again.
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