KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For two years during World War II, Anne Frank, her family and four others lived in silence behind a hidden bookshelf in Amsterdam. They knew that one wrong sound could reveal their hiding place to the Nazis. It was inside those cramped rooms that Anne wrote the diary that would become one of the most widely read books in the world.
Now, visitors to Chicago's Griffin Museum of Science and Industry can experience that history firsthand.
Anne Frank: The Exhibition, developed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, features a full-scale recreation of the Secret Annex, allowing guests to walk through the spaces where Anne lived and wrote. The exhibition also includes more than 130 original artifacts—many on public display for the first time—offering an intimate look at Anne's life before, during and after her time in hiding.
The exhibition arrives at a particularly meaningful time. August 1 marks the anniversary of Anne Frank's final diary entry. August 4 commemorates the day the Secret Annex was discovered by the Nazis in 1944.