Empty and haunted house Anne Frank House Museum refitted for a new generation | News from the world

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Anne Frank House, built around a secret apartment hidden by the Jewish teenager and her family, has reopened after being renovated to accommodate a new generation of visitors whose grandparents parents were born after the Second World War.

The museum and the small apartment where Anne wrote her diary, become the most read document of the Holocaust, attract 1.2 million visitors a year.

The story of Anne is told through simple photos, quotes from her diary and video testimonials from survivors. The Conservatives have now added an audio tour.

"We sometimes say that Anne Frank's house museum is one of the only ones in the world to have nothing to offer but empty spaces," said the director. from the museum, Ronald Leopold.

"An audio tour allowed us to give information without disturbing what I consider to be one of the most powerful elements of this house: its empty."

A trip through the museum, which was reopened Thursday by the Dutch king Willem-Alexander, begins with the story of the Frank family, their flight to the Netherlands after the accession to power. Hitler in Germany and their decision to hide on July 6th. 1942.

Visitors pass through the library which concealed the secret annex at the narrow above a warehouse where Anne, her sister Margot, her father Otto, her mother Edith and four other Jews hid up to When arrested by the German police on 4 August 1944.

The museum then displays the government document reporting the deportation of the Franks in a train of cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Anne was later transferred to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, where she died in early 1945, at the age of 15, one of six million Jews lost under the Nazi regime.

Of those who hid in the secret apartment, only Otto survived the war. He received Anne's diary, kept by Miep Gies, a member of the narrow circle of Dutch friends who helped the Jews to hide.

Otto describes in a film extract the reading of the newspaper after a period of mourning.

"I must say that I was very surprised at the deep thoughts she had there, her seriousness, especially her self-criticism." It was a whole other Anne that I had called my daughter, "he said.

"My conclusion is: as most of the time, I heard very well with her, most parents do not know – do not really know – their own children."

The museum ends with a simple room containing the red and white diary – which has gone beyond the cover – and several more pages are on display. Photographs are not allowed due to the fragility of the pages.

(Report by Toby Sterling, edited by Kirsten Donovan)

Copyright 2018 Thomson Reuters.