Anne Frank and the Secret Annex

In the summer of 1942, an ordinary doorway inside an Amsterdam business concealed an extraordinary secret. Behind it were rooms in the rear annex of the building at 263 Prinsengracht, where Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters, Margot and Anne, went into hiding from the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people.

The entrance initially had only a plain door. Fearing that it might attract attention, the helpers arranged for a movable bookcase to be built in front of it. Installed in August 1942, the bookcase held business files and other materials, allowing it to blend into the surrounding storeroom. To anyone unaware of its purpose, it appeared to be an ordinary part of the office.

Behind the bookcase, the Frank family was joined by Hermann, Auguste and Peter van Pels, and later by Fritz Pfeffer. Eight people lived within the confined rooms of the Secret Annex for more than two years. During the day, they had to remain quiet to avoid being heard by the workers below. Their survival depended upon a small group of helpers who brought food, supplies, books and news from the outside world.

Anne recorded these years in her diary, writing about the restrictions of life in hiding, the relationships among the occupants and her own thoughts as she grew into adolescence. On August 4, 1944, the hiding place was discovered and its occupants were arrested. Anne and Margot later died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Otto Frank was the only one of the eight to survive the Holocaust.

After the arrest, helpers Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl recovered Anne’s scattered writings. Otto later arranged for the diary to be published, preserving the voice of the daughter he had lost. The original movable bookcase remains inside the Anne Frank House, where it stands as both a physical doorway and a reminder of the dangerous boundary that once separated concealment from discovery.