Boltin' About

"Tales from yet another traveller"

Anne Frank's House, Amsterdam

Opening Hours
Daily: from 9 AM to 7 PM
From March 29th to September 1st: 9 AM to 9 PM
On May 4th: 9 AM to 7 PM
On December 31st: 9 AM to 5 PM
On January 1st and December 25th: 12 Noon to 7 PM
Last admittance: 30 minutes prior to closing
Closed on Yom Kippur (in 2002, on September 16th)

The building at number 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, popularly known as Anne Frank's House, is not the place where Anne was born, nor even the home where the Frank family lived after Otto Frank moved from Frankfurt, Germany to the Netherlands in 1933. Instead Anne Frank's House is a four-story merchant's house, built in 1635, where Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, managed two businesses: one which produced pectin to be used in making jelly and the other which produced herbs and spices for making sausages. The so called Anne Frank's House is a typical Amsterdam four-story canal house facing Prinsengracht, one of Amsterdam's most beautiful canals. Behind the house at 263 Prinsengracht street is a separate building that was constructed at a later time: a four-story annex with an attic. This annex is separated from the main house by a space that is about 12 feet wide, but it is connected to the main house by passageways. The annex is the place where Anne Frank and her family hid for 25 months from the Nazis, along with the van Pels family and Dr. Friedrich (Fritz) Pfeffer, a dentist who was a friend of the Franks.

The Franks went into hiding on July 6, 1942 shortly after Anne's 13th birthday on June 12th. One week later they were joined by Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their 15-year-old son Peter and Peter's cat. Dr. Pfeffer joined them on November 16, 1942. On August 4th, 1944, the police raided their hiding place in the annex and they were taken to the Westerbork transit camp on a passenger train, after a short stay at the Amsterdam headquarters of the Security Police. On September 3, 1944, all 8 were loaded onto a freight train and taken on the last transport of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz, where they arrived on the night of September 5th and 6th. Otto Frank was the only one of the 8 who survived. He died on August 19, 1980 in Switzerland.

Anne Frank, her mother, sister and the others all died in various Nazi concentration camps to which they were transferred from Auschwitz. Anne and her sister, Margot, were sent from Auschwitz on October 28, 1944 to the Bergen-Belsen camp on a transport which, according to the International Red Cross, consisted of sick women who were expected to recover from their illness. Anne and Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, only a few weeks before this concentration camp was liberated.