Anne Frank The Exhibition Brings Tragic Story to Life, Re-creating the Famous Annex

I look down at the sheet of glass that separates me and a large-scale map of Europe. Small red flags flood the region, each representing thousands of concentration and extermination camps. It’s an incredibly sobering experience, gingerly stepping across what felt like a memorial for six million Jews. Visitors can come in and out of the room, but the flags remain below the glass, pinned to their very last moments of survival.

Never before has Anne Frank’s story been physically portrayed outside of Amsterdam. That is, until now.

For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House, which preserves the Annex where Anne and her family went into hiding in 1942, has brought an immersive experience to the United States: Anne Frank The Exhibition.

The exhibition’s world premiere took place on January 27, honoring both International Holocaust Remembrance Day as well as the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

“Rising anti-semitism worldwide, and certainly here in New York and the U.S., has definitely amplified the impact of what we are doing,” Michael Glickman, an advisor to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, told Straus News. “It’s made it more pressing for us to make sure that we could present an exhibition to help people understand what happens when this hatred goes unchecked. We want people to understand what happens when anti-semitism takes hold.”

Anne Frank The Exhibition is held in Union Square’s Center for Jewish History and presents a full-scale recreation of the Annex where Anne and her family hid from the Nazi regime for two years. While a physical recreation of the Annex allows visitors to form an immersive connection with history, the 7,500 square foot NYC exhibition is unique to the original in Amsterdam.

Otto Frank, Anne’s father, wished for the original site to remain empty as a reminder of the destructive loss he and millions of Jews experienced. “It’s a place about absence,” Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, told the New York Times. But Anne Frank The Exhibition in NYC has been recreated to represent what the Annex looked like prior to Nazi invasion while also extending into Otto Frank’s life and efforts after the war.

“This is a much more comprehensive story than what is told in Amsterdam. This was the ability to take something that works incredibly well over there and amplify it for an American audience,” said Glickman.

In addition to the room replications, many items from the Anne Frank House, such as Anne’s first photo album, an invitation to a film screening and handwritten verses of her poetry have been included. Some have never even been displayed to the public.

“We feel that this will bring audiences who are not necessarily familiar with the story closer to that history and closer to Anne Frank,” said Leopold.

Joy, an exhibition attendee, explained that while she’s not Jewish herself, she recently moved to a predominantly Jewish area in Brooklyn. The exhibition has made her feel closer to her community, recognizing that the recreation is “wonderful, but at the same time so sad,” she said.

By bringing Anne’s story to the US, Jewish identity and preservation will now be more globally accessible. Audiences outside the Netherlands will have the opportunity to learn about Jewish history, the Holocaust and the importance of remembering Anne as “a girl, a writer, and a symbol of resilience and strength.”

“For those who can’t go to Amsterdam, or, as we’ve seen, for people who have been or are going to Amsterdam, this has become a really powerful experience for them to understand more of the story,” said Glickman.

Tumorra, a New York City resident who recently visited the exhibition, told Straus News that physically bringing Anne’s story to life has made for a pivotal educational experience.

“I already knew [about Anne Frank] from reading her diary and watching videos, but I learned a lot more than what I already knew. Seeing it in real time gives a whole new meaning,” said Tumorra.

All general admission tickets include an individual audio guide, a feature that a group who traveled from Pennsylvania to visit the exhibition said made their experience much more intimate. The stillness of the space and the personal audio recordings allowed them to interpret the story on a deeper level.

These immersive instalments were designed to enhance the educational experience in a time of escalating antisemitism, especially for future generations. Due to generous philanthropic funding, the Anne Frank House has been able to subsidize exhibition visits for NYC Public Schools as well as federally funded schools across the country.

The Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina has also developed a curriculum for visiting teachers, demonstrating the exhibition’s investment in education. The content of the curriculum is meant to provide the historical context of antisemitism so that students are empowered to recognize and combat contemporary manifestations.

Originally scheduled to run for just three months, Anne Frank The Exhibition has been extended through Oct. 31, 2025 due to an overwhelming visitor interest. Until then, the Center for Jewish History will continue to uplift Anne Frank’s story and convey “how this history, how this memory will go into the 21st century,” said Leopold.