NETHERLANDS: Expansion of Anne Frank House Attracts Spielberg

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kim Green

AMSTERDAM, Jun 18 1995 (IPS) - Plans to restore the house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II, and where she wrote her world famous diary, have been helped by a cash donation from American film director Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg committed 250,000 dollars from his Oscar-winning movie ‘Schindler’s List’ toward the 14.8 million U.S. dollar needed to make the ‘Anne Frank House’ more accessible to a new generation of visitors — more than half a century after Anne died in Bergen-Belsen.

The Anne Frank House, which serves as a museum and a memorial to victims of the Holocaust, was first approached in November 1993 by the cinema distribution group UIP Holland about collaborating on the Netherlands premier of ‘Schindler’s List’ in February 1994.

Impressed by an early screening of the film, the director of the Anne Frank Foundation, Hans Westra, invited Spielberg to tour the site.

During the visit, Westra mentioned the House’s plan to expand the facility by transforming a neighbouring building into a venue for exhibitions, educational programmes, a news media library and an auditorium.

The restoration project is relying on the recollections of Miep Gies, 86, a pre-war secretary of Anne’s father Otto Frank. During the war, Gies was one of the few people who knew where the Frank family was hiding and she frequently visited and assisted them during that period.

She also is the discoverer of the diary, and now the only living person who can testify to the Frank family’s war experiences.

The architectural addition will enable the City of Amsterdam to restore the front house of 263 Prinsengracht to its wartime state, which Westra believes will facilitate the younger generation’s understanding of the Frank family’s living conditions and the role of the ‘helpers’ during their two-year concealment.

Spielberg told Westra to contact him when the plans were finalised.

The restoration project comes at a time when the impact of Anne Frank’s memory is shifting. Now, 80 percent of the museum’s 600,000 yearly visitors have not themselves experienced World War II.

“The Anne Frank House serves a special function. People are very emotionally involved with what happened in Europe and want to try to come to terms with it,” Westra says. (MORE)