Anne Frank House

The house

The canal house was built in 1635 and later held a spice company

The house was built by Dirk van Delft in 1635, and the canal-side facade dates from a renovation of 1740. It was a private residence until the nineteenth century, then a warehouse. On 1 December 1940 Otto Frank moved the offices of the companies Opekta and Pectacon there.

The annex

The rear building was hidden from view on all four sides

The Achterhuis, or Secret Annex, is the rear extension of the building. It was concealed from view by houses on all four sides of a quadrangle. Anne Frank wrote in her diary that it was relatively luxurious compared to other hiding places they had heard about.

450 square feetof floor space in the inhabited rooms

The diary

Otto Frank compiled the diary, and it was published in 1947

Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl returned to the hiding place and retrieved books and papers. After Otto Frank came back to Amsterdam in June 1945, he was given Anne's diaries and compiled them into a book, published in Dutch in 1947 as Het Achterhuis, the title Anne had chosen for a future memoir or novel.

Saved

A campaign saved the building from demolition in 1955

By 1955 the Berghaus Company had bought the row of houses and planned to demolish them. A campaign to save the building was started by the Dutch paper Het Vrije Volk on November 23, 1955. The Anne Frank Foundation was established in 1957 under Otto Frank, and the building opened as a museum in 1960.

The raid

The group hid for two years and one month before the raid

Otto Frank, his wife Edith and their daughters Margot and Anne hid here with four other Jews seeking refuge from Nazi persecution. They remained hidden for two years and one month, until they were raided by the Nazi authorities and arrested. Of the hidden group, only Otto Frank survived the camps.