“I’ve found that there is always some beauty left—in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you,” Anne Frank wrote in 1944. Visitors to New York City’s Center for Jewish History can soon immerse themselves in a meticulous replica of the space where the 14-year-old penned those words—among many other moving and insightful passages—in her posthumously published diary. As reported by the Associated Press, a full-scale reconstruction of the secret annex where Frank and her family lived in hiding from Nazis for over two years will open at the Union Square site on January 27, 2025—which marks both International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp’s liberation.
The Anne Frank House museum is located in the Dutch capital, where the family’s annex was situated, and its recreation is being built in the Netherlands to be shipped overseas for the exhibition. In July 1942, Anne, her older sister Margot, and their parents, Otto and Edith, moved into the concealed space within Otto’s company premises. The Franks’ hiding spot was discovered in 1944, and the patriarch was ultimately the only family member to survive the Holocaust. He went on to publish Anne’s journals via The Diary of a Young Girl in 1947.
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The exhibition will also feature artifacts including photo albums and a yellow star badge. Some pieces to be displayed will be on public view for the first time, according to the official Anne Frank: The Exhibition website.
“What we try to achieve with this exhibition is that our visitors will learn about Anne not just as a victim, but through the multifaceted lens of a life, as a teenage girl, as a writer, as a symbol of resilience and of strength,” Anne Frank House director Ronald Leopold said. “We hope that they will contemplate the context that shaped her life.”