Published:
2010
Source: Secret Annex Online
The Anne Frank House museum has launched an online virtual tour of the secret rooms in which the Frank family and other Jews lived. The tour shows the rooms, which have about 1 million visitors annually, in great detail. Teenager Anne Frank hid and wrote her diary in the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Anne and the other eight residents of the secret rooms were arrested in August 1944 and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Only Anne's father, Otto Frank, survived.
The Secret Annex Online is a 3D version of the house at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam where Anne Frank lived in hiding during The Second World War. In this three-dimensional online environment, visitors can explore the front of the house and the secret annex as it was then, and hear stories that explain in greater depth what happened there.
The museum in Amsterdam does not contain furniture or objects of daily use from the war years. After the inhabitants were arrested, the secret annex was cleared. After the war, Otto Frank wished for it to remain empty. By contrast, the online version contains objects that visitors can see and find out more about. The furnished rooms have been created based on photographs made in 1999, when the front part of the house and the secret annex were temporarily furnished as part of the creation of educational materials showing how they were used.
The Secret Annex Online can be visited to prepare for a visit to the museum in Amsterdam, but can also offer deeper insight and enrichment after a visit.
Events during the period of hiding are told in The Secret Annex Online in a series of stories. These are based on both the popular and authoritative editions of the diary and on reports by witnesses from the Anne Frank House archives. Ambient sound and music accompany the narration.
The Secret Annex Online is part of the rich Anne Frank House website which contains much information about the museum, Anne's family and diary as well as activities and information for students, teachers and other visitors.