A board game, pictures of movie stars, a dress, a bicycle … seemingly mundane ephemera are deeply moving at “Anne Frank: The Exhibition,” which opens at the Center for Jewish History (15 W. 16th St., Union Square) on January 27 — the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
It’s a full-scale recreation of the Amsterdam annex where Anne, her sister Margot, parents Edith and Otto and four other Jews hid for two years, and it’s filled with everyday artifacts that give fresh insight into the life of the famed diarist, who was eventually arrested and sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she died in 1945 at age 16.
The exhibition marks the first time that the Anne Frank House, one of the most visited historical sites in Europe, has traveled beyond the Dutch capital. Ronald Leopold, the executive director of the Anne Frank House, said it’s especially timely given the rising tide of antisemitism in recent years, even before the October 7 attacks.
“You need to reflect on why this happened and how it could have happened. It was the work of human beings,” he told the Post. “It also hopefully tells us something about who we are and for younger generations, who we want to be, knowing and seeing what has happened.”
Here, a look at some of the many noteworthy items on display.
Anne’s postcards
The teen decorated the room she shared with dentist Fritz Pfeffer with pictures of movie stars and royalty, such as Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret of the British royal family, Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers. As she got older, she became more interested in art and covered a postcard of movie stars with a picture of a Michelangelo statue.
Peter van Pels’ bedroom
Teen Peter van Pels and his family were some of the other Jews who lived in the annex. He was the only one who had his own room, along with a bicycle that he wouldn’t have been able to use and a board game he received for his 16th while in hiding. At first, he and Anne did not get along but they began spending time together and eventually fell in love. They cuddled and kissed in Peter’s room, but Anne eventually backed off from the relationship. After all of those living in the annex were arrested by Nazi police in 1944, Peter ended up at the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died at age 18 in 1945, according to records.
Frank family china
The Frank family had their good china with them in the annex. It was made in Germany in 1925 and perhaps reminded Edith Frank of the country where she was born and felt most tied to. The Franks left Germany for the Netherlands in 1933, hoping to escape rising anti-semitism. “Edith never felt well in Holland. Edith was German, and she missed Germany. She did not learn Dutch very well,” Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias would say in an interview decades later.
Miep Gies’ typewriter
Miep was Otto Frank’s secretary, and she and husband Jan Gies helped the Frank family during the twenty-five months they spent in hiding. Together with her colleague, Bep Voskuijl, she retrieved Anne’s precious diary after the family was arrested and kept everything safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz in June 1945. He was the only one who lived in the annex who survived.
Anne’s kindergarten class photo
The exhibition is capped off by a picture of Anne Frank’s kindergarten class. Of the 32 children, 15 were Jewish. Five of them survived the Holocaust either in hiding or in the camps. Ten of them were murdered, all of them just teenagers. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Leopold said, “we remember the 1.5 million lives of Jewish children that were cut short for the single reason that they were Jewish.”
