Anne Frank House
The Anne Frank Museum is a museum dedicated to one of the most famous Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank. The museum is located on the Prinsengracht canal about five minutes of walk from the Royal Palace and is a must see if visiting the city of Amsterdam.
The rear of the house was used by Anne Frank family and four other Jewish people as a hiding place from the Nazi persecutions for two years and one month before they were betrayed to the Nazi authorities and deported to the concentration camps. The hiding place was cleared and all items of the Frank family and their friends were seized as Government property after the arrest of the hiding group. However, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl who helped the hiding families rescued some of the personal items including The Diary of Anne Frank. The diary was given to Anne’s father Otto Frank who was the only one from the group to survive the World War II.
After Otto Frank published his daughter’s diary people started to visit the secret room in the house and were informally shown around by those who helped to hide the family. In 1957 was established the Anne Frank Foundation to collect enough funds to purchase the building from the developers who wanted to demolish it. In the same year the company that owned the building donated it to the Foundation which then used the collected funds to purchase the house next door and opened both houses as a museum in 1960.