Major Anne Frank exhibit, replica of her annex, coming to NYC in January

A groundbreaking exhibition coming to New York City this January will give visitors the chance to tour a full-scale replica of the annex rooms where young Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family hid for two years attempting to elude Nazi capture and the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II.

Titled "Anne Frank, The Exhibition," the immersive experience, undertaken in conjunction with the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, opens Jan. 27 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. The date marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this January commemorates the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1.1 million men, women and children were killed in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was a genocide that claimed more than 11 million lives, including more than 6 million Jews directly targeted for extermination by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

"Anne Frank's words resonate and inspire today, a voice we carry to all corners of the world, nearly eight decades later," the executive director of the Anne Frank House, Ronald Leopold, said in a statement Wednesday. "As a custodian of Anne's legacy, we have an obligation to help world audiences understand the historical roots and evolution of antisemitism, including how it fueled Nazi ideology that led to the Holocaust."

As president of the Center for Jewish History, Gavriel Rosenfeld, said in a statement: "As we approach the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January, Anne Frank's story becomes more urgent than ever. In a time of rising antisemitism, her diary serves as both a warning and a call to action, reminding us of the devastating impact of hatred."

The story of Anne Frank, who died of typhus at age 15 while a prisoner at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany just weeks before its liberation, gained worldwide attention with the postwar publication of her diaries, first in Dutch under the title "Het Achterhuis — The Secret Annex, Diary Notes 14 June 1942-1 August 1944."

The book has since been translated into 70 languages, selling more than 35 million copies, as "The Diary of a Young Girl."

Most know it simply as "The Diary of Anne F,rank."

That diary chronicles the experiences and observations of young Anne from the time she, her sister, Margot, parents, Otto and Edith, Otto's business partner, Hermann van Pels, his wife, Auguste, their son, Peter, and later a dentist friend of their helper were forced into hiding above the business Otto Frank ran in Amsterdam.

As Jews, the families were attempting to avoid Nazi persecution and managed to stay secreted away in the annex, concealed behind a movable bookcase, until being discovered and hauled off to concentration camps by German authorities in August 1944.

Of the eight who went into hiding in that annex, only Otto Frank survived the war. He later agreed to publish the diaries, which had been saved by the woman who'd hidden them, Miep Gies.

The exhibition will occupy more than 7,500 square feet of gallery space and includes not only a full-scale annex replica, but features more than 100 original collection items — among them, Anne's first photo album and handwritten notes and poetry verses.

The exhibition will offer visitors "an opportunity to learn about Anne Frank not as a victim but through the multifaceted lens of her life — as a girl, a writer, and a symbol of resilience and strength."

It will run until April 30 and is designed for adults and for children age 10 and older. General admission tickets include an audio guide. For more information, visit AnneFrankExhibit.org. 

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”