Anne Frank House recreated in NYC exhibit honoring Auschwitz liberation: ‘We remember the lives of 1.5 million Jewish children cut short’

A board game, pictures of movie stars, a dress, a bicycle … seemingly ordinary ephemera are deeply moving in “Anne Frank: The Exhibition,” which opens at the Center for Jewish History (15 W. 16th St., Union Square) on January 27 – the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

It is a full-scale recreation of the Amsterdam annex where Anne, her sister Margot, parents Edith and Otto and four other Jews hid for two years, and is filled with everyday objects that give a fresh insight into life of the famous diarist, who was eventually arrested and sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she died in 1945 at the age of 16.

The exhibition marks the first time that the Anne Frank House, one of Europe’s most visited historic sites, has traveled beyond the Dutch capital. Ronald Leopold, the executive director of the Anne Frank House, said it is especially timely given the rising tide of anti-Semitism in recent years, even before the Oct. 7 attacks.

“You have to reflect on why this happened and how it could have happened. It was the work of human beings,” he told the Post. “We also hope that it tells us something about who we are and about the younger generations, who we want to be, knowing and seeing what happened.”

Here, a look at some of the many important items on display.

Anna’s postcards

The teenager decorated the room she shared with dentist Fritz Pfeffer with pictures of movie stars and royalty, such as Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret of the British royal family, Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers. As she grew older, she became more interested in art and covered a postcard of movie stars with a photo of a statue of Michelangelo.

Peter van Pels’ bedroom

The teenager Peter van Pels and his family were some of the other Jews living in the annex. He was the only one who had his own room, along with a bike he wouldn’t have been able to use and a board game he got for 16 while in hiding. At first, he and Anne did not get along, but they started spending time together and eventually fell in love. They hugged and kissed in Peter’s room, but Anne eventually withdrew from the relationship. After everyone living in the annex was arrested by the Nazi police in 1944, Peter ended up in the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died at the age of 18 in 1945, according to records.

Frank family china

The Frank family had fine china with them in the annex. It was made in Germany in 1925 and probably reminded Ed Frank of the country where she was born and felt most connected to. The Franks left Germany for the Netherlands in 1933, hoping to escape growing anti-Semitism. “Edith has never felt good in the Netherlands. Edith was Germanand she missed Germany. She didn’t learn Dutch well,” Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias would say in an interview decades later.

Miep Gies typewriter

Miep was Otto Frank’s secretary, and she and her husband Jan Gies helped the Frank family during the twenty-five months they spent in hiding. Together with her colleague, Bep Voskuijl, she took Anna’s precious diary after the family was arrested and kept everything safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz in June 1945. He was the only one who lived in the annex to survive.

Photo of Anna’s kindergarten class

The exhibit closes with a photo of Anne Frank’s kindergarten class. Of the 32 children, 15 were Jewish. Five of them survived the Holocaust either in hiding or in camps. Ten of them were killed, all just teenagers. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Leopold said, “we remember the lives of the 1.5 million Jewish children who were cut short for the sole reason that they were Jewish.”