The Diaries of Anne Frank Returned Home

If Anne Frank were still alive, she would be a grandmother, maybe a great-grandmother and definitely a celebrated writer.

Anne started her writing career the day she scribbled her first entry in her diary, a birthday present when she became thirteen. A few months later the Frank family went into hiding in the Secret Annex at Prinsengracht. Here she wrote her diary and dreamt of a career as a journalist or writer. In August 1945, the family was betrayed and brought to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Otto Frank, Anne’s father the sole survivor of the family, found Anne’s diary after the war and published it. After his death in 1980, he bequeathed Anne’s writings to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD).

Until now, the Anne Frankhuis showed facsimiles of a selection of Anne’s writings. Her red-checkered diary was on temporary loan from the NIOD. But from November 2009, her complete works including the red-checkered diary, the second and third diary, the Verhaaltjesboek (Tales from the secret Annexe) and the mooie zinnenboek (beautiful sentences book) will be on permanent display in the museum’s new exhibition hall. In addition, the visitors will see a rotating selection of forty brittle loose sheets of the reworked novel version of the diary. In May 1944, Anne started reworking her diary into a novel. The diary as we know it today is a combination of the original diary and the novel-to-be.

Anne Frank shows in her diaries what impact living in hiding had on a young girl. Seeing the original  handwriting cannot but touch the millions of visitors to the Anne Frankhuis. It is good to know that the diaries have finally come home.

“Dit is een foto , zoals ik me zou wensen, altijd zo te zijn. Dan had ik nog wel een kans om naar Holywood te komen.” Anne Frank, 18 Oct 1942

Anne’s entry translates as: This is a photo I wish myself to look like all the time. Then I might have a chance to go to Hollywood

Anne Frankhuis
Prinsengracht 263
tram 13 and 17, Westermarkt stop

opening hours:
September – March: 9 am – 7 pm
April – June: 9 am – 9 pm
July – August 9 am – 10 pm

related article: Anne Frank’s Birthday

photo credit: rosewithouta thorn84 @flickr