Anne Frank Annex Exhibition To Open In NYC in January 2025

The Anne Frank House will open the Anne Frank The Exhibition in New York City. For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House will present a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam to immerse visitors in a full-scale recreation of the rooms where Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and four other Jews spent two years hiding to evade Nazi capture.

As a nonprofit organization helping to shape global understanding of the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance, including lessons on modern day antisemitism, racism, and discrimination, the Anne Frank House is entrusted with the preservation of the Annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II. This exhibition, presented in New York City in partnership with the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, opens on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2025, to mark the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. 

Anne Frank The Exhibition is a first-of-its-kind, full-scale recreation of the complete Annex, furnished as it would have been when Anne and her family were forced into hiding. Moving through the exhibition, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the context that shaped Anne's life—from her early years in Frankfurt, Germany through the rise of the Nazi regime and the family's 1934 move to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where Anne lived for ten years until her 1944 arrest and deportation to Westerbork, a large transit camp in the Netherlands, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a concentration camp and killing center in Nazi-occupied Poland, and eventually to her death at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany when she was 15 years old. 

Designed for audiences who may not have the opportunity to visit the Netherlands, the new exhibition in New York City is anticipated to draw extraordinary attendance for what will be among the most important presentations of Jewish historical content on view in the United States. Through the recreated Annex; exhibition galleries immersing visitors in place and history through video, sound, photography, and animation; and more than 100 original collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Anne Frank The Exhibition will provide an opportunity to learn about Anne Frank not as a victim but through the multifaceted lens of her life—as a girl, a writer, and a symbol of resilience and strength. This is a story inspired by one of the most translated books in the world.

The New York City exhibition will occupy over 7,500 square feet of gallery space in the heart of Union Square. This marks the first time dozens of artifacts will be seen in the United States—many have never been seen in public. 

Artifacts in the exhibition include: Anne Frank's first photo album (1929-1942); Anne Frank's typed and handwritten invitation to her friend for a film screening in her home (by 1942, anti-Jewish measures prohibited Jews from attending the cinema); andHandwritten verses by Anne Frank in her friends' poetry albums. 

Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House, said: “Anne Frank's words resonate and inspire today, a voice we carry to all corners of the world, nearly eight decades later. As a custodian of Anne's legacy, we have an obligation to help world audiences understand the historical roots and evolution of antisemitism, including how it fueled Nazi ideology that led to the Holocaust. Anne's legacy is remarkable, as represented in the diary she left us, and as one of the 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered at the hands of Nazi officials and their collaborators. Through this exhibition, the Anne Frank House offers insights into how this could have happened and what it means for us today. The exhibition provides perspectives, geared toward younger generations, that are certain to deepen our collective understanding of Anne Frank and hopefully provide a better understanding of ourselves. By bringing this exhibition to New York—a place with many ties to Anne's story— the Anne Frank House is expanding the reach of our work to encourage more people to remember Anne Frank, reflect on her life story, and respond by standing against antisemitism and hatred in their own communities.”

Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld, President of the Center for Jewish History, said: "We are absolutely thrilled to partner with the Anne Frank House on this landmark exhibition. As we approach the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January, Anne Frank's story becomes more urgent than ever. In a time of rising antisemitism, her diary serves as both a warning and a call to action, reminding us of the devastating impact of hatred. This exhibition challenges us to confront these dangers head-on and honor the memory of those lost in the Holocaust." 

Anne Frank The Exhibition is a limited engagement, scheduled to close on April 30, 2025. Public programming and educational initiatives tied to the exhibition will be announced when the exhibition opens to the public. 

The Annex

In July 1942, Anne Frank (13), her parents, Otto and Edith Frank, and her sister, Margo Frank (16), went into hiding in the annex at the back of her father's company. The Van Pels family (Hermann, Auguste, and their 15-year-old son, Peter) followed the next week. Four months later, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer. All of them were Jews daring to escape certain death at the hands of the Nazis amid the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. Unable to go to school, largely cut off from the rest of the world, and trapped in close quarters with others while a war raged outside, Anne poured herself into her diary. The people in hiding in the Annex were discovered in 1944, and Anne and the others were arrested and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Anne and her sister Margot were then sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in February 1945. Anne was 15. Margot was 18 or 19. Otto Frank was the only person from the Annex to survive the Holocaust.

The Diary

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, more commonly known as The Diary of Anne Frank, is one of the most translated books in the world. Transformed multiple times for stage and screen, the published book's source is the personal diary that Anne Frank kept in multiple notebooks during the two-year period of hiding with her family in rooms located in the back house of her father's company in Amsterdam. Soon after Anne and the others were arrested in 1944, Miep Gies, one of the people who risked their lives to help them in hiding, returned to the annex and found their belongings ransacked. Miep was relieved to find Anne's diary pages, knowing how important her writings were to her, and saved them for her return. Otto was the only person from the annex to survive the Holocaust. When Miep first gave him his daughter's diary, he could not bring himself to read it. Soon, he did and he could not stop, sharing it with relatives and friends who encouraged him to publish what they considered “an important human document.” Upon its publication, Otto Frank wrote: "How proud Anne would have been if she had lived to see this. After all, on 29 March 1944, she wrote: ‘Imagine how interesting it would be if I published a novel about Secret Annex.'"

General Information

Tickets available at AnneFrankExhibit.orghttp://AnneFrankExhibit.org. The exhibition is designed for children (ages 10 and older) and adults. All general admission tickets include the exhibition audio guide. Visitors should plan to spend approximately one hour at the exhibition. Last entry is one hour before closing. 

Timed entry tickets, Monday through Friday: $21 (17 and under, $16)Timed entry tickets, Sunday and holidays: $27 (17 and under, $22)Flex tickets, Monday through Friday: $34Flex tickets, Sunday and holidays: $48

Family tickets (2 adults + 2 children under 17 years): Timed entry tickets, Monday through Friday: $68 (additional 17 and under ticket, $16)Timed entry tickets, Sunday and holidays: $90 (additional 17 and under ticket, $22)Flex tickets, Monday through Friday: $95 (additional 17 and under ticket, $18)Flex tickets, Sunday and holidays: $135 (additional 17 and under ticket, $25)

Group sales (students and non-school youth group visits) $225 between 10 and 25 students (includes up to three adult chaperons), timed entry  Group sales (adults) $300 per group of 10, timed entry

Hours: Sunday through Thursday: 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.Friday: 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.Saturday: Closed

Address: Center for Jewish History15 West 16th Street, New York, N.Y. between 5th and 6th AvenuesNeighborhood: Union Square in Manhattan
 

About the Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House was established in 1957 in cooperation with Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, as an independent nonprofit organization entrusted with the preservation of the Annex where Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in 1942 during the Second World War. The Annex is where Anne wrote her diary, and where she and her family hid from the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands until being discovered and arrested by police officers in 1944. Following her transport to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, Anne and her sister Margot were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died in 1945. For nearly seven decades, the Anne Frank House has served as a place of memory and a place of learning. Committed to bringing Anne's life story to world audiences, the Anne Frank House has emerged as a primary resource for teaching and learning about the Holocaust. Through Anne's legacy the Anne Frank House empowers people of all ages—and especially young people—to reflect on the dangers of antisemitism, racism, and discrimination and the importance of freedom, equal rights, and democracy. 
 

About the Center for Jewish History

The Center for Jewish History illuminates the Jewish past for audiences today and preserves it for the future. Home to the world's largest Jewish archive outside Israel, it is a dynamic space for learning and public engagement. Opened in 2000, the Center is the collaborative home of five partner organizations (the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research) whose collections comprise over 7 miles of archival documents, 500,000 volumes of books, 12 million digital items, and thousands of artworks, objects, textiles, and recordings. The Center opens these vast archives to the public and activates the stories that they hold through exhibits, fellowships, genealogy programs, and an active calendar of events – making it a hub for Jewish culture and heritage.