Anne Frank Huis

The next morning, we decided to hit some of the other museums in Amsterdam. To start off the day, we went to the Anne Frank Huis, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary during WWII. Anne Frank and her family, along with another Jewish family, lived in a secret annex in hiding from July 6, 1942 to August 4, 1944, when the building was stormed by the German Security Police. Upon their discovery, everyone in hiding was seized and deported to various concentration camps. Unfortunately, Otto Frank, Anne's father, was the only one who was able to survive the horrors of life at the mercy of Nazi Germany. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen just one month before the Allied victory in early March of 1945.

The museum documents her life during her years in hiding and has the actual diary on display, which is admirably optimistic with only hints of what must have been unsurmountable despair.
Today, the museum is just as it was when Anne and her family spent their last days there. The original furniture has been removed, but you can still see the pictures of 1940s movie stars and a young Queen Elizabeth adorning the walls of her narrow room. Even the pencil marks that Anne's mother, Edith Frank, made on the walls to denote the heights of her children are still preserved.

The top picture is of the house itself, which is located directly on the Prinsengracht, one of the many canals dissecting the city. The lower picture is probably what the view was like from inside the annex for its residents during their 25 months in hiding.