NEW YORK (AP) — A full-scale replica of the secret annex where Anne Frank penned her famous diary opened in New York City on Monday as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The exhibit at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan represents the first time the annex has been completely recreated outside of Amsterdam, where the space is a central part of the Anne Frank House museum.
But while the original annex has been intentionally left empty, the New York reconstruction shows the five rooms as they would have looked while the Frank family and others lived in hiding.
The spaces are filled with furniture and possessions, including a reconstruction of the writing desk where Frank wrote her diary.
Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House, said furnishing the recreated space was important to tell Anne's story in a new and immersive way, especially for those who may not get to visit the Amsterdam museum, which also houses Frank’s original diary.
“We very much hope that we will be able to to touch people’s hearts here, because education is the focus of this exhibition,” Leopold said at Monday's opening. “And education starts with empathy — empathy with what happened here, what happened in Amsterdam during those years, what was done to Anne Frank.”
The Frank family hid with other Jews for two years in the attic of patriarch Otto Frank’s office in Amsterdam as the Nazi German army occupied the Netherlands during World War II.
They were eventually discovered in 1944 and sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was liberated by Soviet troops 80 years ago Monday. Anne and her older sister Margot died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Their father, Otto, was the only person from the annex to survive the Holocaust. After the war, he published his 15-year-old daughter’s diary, which is considered one of the most important works of the 20th century. Frank died in 1980 at the age of 91.
Hannah-Milena Elias, the granddaughter of Anne Frank’s cousin, Buddy Elias, said she found it emotional walking through the exhibit rooms.
“It is quite overwhelming and quite touching to see to see what a tiny space the families had to stay in and live for more than two years,” said the 29-year-old, who lives in Switzerland.
Her sibling, Leyb-Anouk Elias, hoped the exhibit would encourage visitors to reflect on what it means to face discrimination or be a minority today.
“History, unfortunately, is repeating itself in different ways,” the 27-year-old Berlin resident said. “We have to be very, very careful how to act and to do stuff against it, to not ever make this happen again.”
The New York exhibit, which runs through April 30, spans more than 7,500 square feet (696 square meters) and includes more than 100 photos and other artifacts — many never before displayed publicly, according to officials.
Among the items are Anne Frank’s first photo album and her handwritten poetry, as well as a replica of her famous diary. There’s also nearly 80 translated editions of her diary and even the Oscar won by Shelley Winters for the 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The installation is presented chronologically, tracing the Frank family's life in Germany through the rise of the Nazi regime, the family’s flight to Amsterdam and their life in hiding and eventual capture.
Henry Byrne, a junior at Xavier, a Catholic high school in Manhattan, said learning about the family's saga helped him grasp the enormity of the Holocaust.
“It taught me a lot about how just because you see one story, walk into these rooms and all the beds and the tables, that’s just one person’s life," the 16-year-old said. "And there were millions that were lost.”
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This story has been updated to correct descendant’s name to Leyb-Anouk Elias, not Leyv-Anouk Elias.
Philip Marcelo And Joseph Frederick, The Associated Press
