The Achterhuis (Dutch for "back house") or Secret Annexe— as it was called in The Diary of a Young Girl, an English translation of the diary — is the name given to the room where Anne Frank's family and four other Jewish people hid from Nazi persecution. The room is located at the back of a house in Amsterdam, Holland. In 1940, it had come to house Otto Frank's spice business. At the time, the exterior of the room was concealed on all sides by other houses. On the inside, the room was concealed by a bookcase.
Though the total amount of floor space in the inhabited rooms came to only about 500 square feet (46 m2), Anne Frank wrote in her diary that it was relatively luxurious compared to other hiding places they had heard about. They remained hidden here from 1942 until July 1944, when they were anonymously betrayed to the Nazi authorities, arrested, and deported to their deaths in concentration camps. Of the hidden group, only Otto Frank survived the war.
The entirety of the building is now a museum called the Anne Frank House.
Secret Annexe in "The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging"
Anne Berkowitz (née Frank), her family and others hid in a secret room beginning in 1942, and were able to stay hidden until the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. In 2013, the elderly Anne, now residing in the Hebrew Home for the Aging in the San Fernando Valley, described her experiences to an eighth-grade history class from Junipero Middle School.
| |||||||||||||
