Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
annex with this swinging bookcase, stacked with business files.
Though not exactly a secret (since it's hard to hide an entire
building), the annex was just one of thousands of back-houses
(achterhuis),
a common feature in Amsterdam, and the Nazis had
no reason to suspect anything on the premises of the legitimate
Opekta business.
• Pass through the bookcase entrance into the Secret Annex into...
Otto, Edith, and Margot's Room
The family carried on life as usual. Otto read Dickens'
Sketches by
Boz,
Edith read from a
prayer book
in their native German, and
the children continued their studies, with Margot taking
Latin
lessons
by correspondence course. They avidly followed the course
of the war by radio broadcasts and news from their helpers. As the
tides of war slowly turned and it appeared they might one day be
saved from the Nazis, Otto tracked the Allied advance on a
map
of Normandy.
The room is very small, even without the furniture. Imagine
yourself and two fellow tourists confined here for two years....
Pencil lines
on the wall track Margot's and Anne's heights,
marking the point at which these growing lives were cut short.
Anne Frank's Room
Pan the room clockwise to see some of the young girl's idols in
photos and clippings she pasted there herself: American actor
Robert Stack, the future Queen Elizabeth II as a child, matinee
idol Rudy Vallee, figure-skating actress Sonja Henie, and on the
other wall, actress Greta Garbo, actor Ray Milland, Renaissance
man Leonardo da Vinci, and actress Ginger Rogers.
Out the window (which had to be blacked out) is the back
courtyard—a chestnut tree and a few buildings. These things,
along with the Westerkerk bell chiming every 15 minutes,
represented the borders of Anne's “outside world.”
Picture Anne at her small desk, writing in her diary.
In November of 1942, they invited a Jewish neighbor to join
them, and Anne was forced to share the tiny room. Fritz Pfeffer
(known in the
Diary
as “Mr. Dussel”) was a middle-aged dentist
with whom Anne didn't get along. Pfeffer wrote a farewell letter to
his non-Jewish fiancée, who continued to live nearby and receive
news of him from Miep Gies without knowing his whereabouts.
The Bathroom
The eight inhabitants shared this bathroom. During the day, they
didn't dare flush the toilet.
• Ascend the steep staircase—silently—to the...
