Near the tower of the Westerkerk, a short walk from the house where she hid, a bronze statue of Anne Frank stands in quiet tribute to the young diarist whose words have come to symbolise the millions murdered in the Holocaust. The slight, upright figure of the girl has become a place of remembrance and reflection in the heart of Amsterdam. Anne Frank was a Jewish girl whose family hid from the Nazi occupiers in a concealed annexe behind a canal-house for more than two years, until they were betrayed and deported. She died in a concentration camp at the age of fifteen, but the diary she kept in hiding survived to become one of the most widely read books in the world. The monument captures her as a slender adolescent, head slightly bowed, a deliberately modest and human image rather than a grand heroic statue, reflecting the ordinary girl whose extraordinary writing gave a voice to the victims of an unimaginable crime. Its position near the Westerkerk is deeply fitting, for Anne wrote in her diary of hearing the bells of the church tower from her hiding place, finding comfort in their sound, and the statue stands within sight and sound of those same bells. The spot has become a place where visitors pause to remember, often leaving flowers, in a city that has made the preservation of her memory and the lessons of her story a central part of its identity. Standing in the open in a busy and historic quarter, free to visit at any hour and close to the Anne Frank House itself, the monument offers a moment of quiet reflection amid the bustle of the city, a simple and moving reminder of one young life among the many that were lost. Amsterdam has done much to keep alive the memory of Anne Frank and the wider tragedy of the city Jewish community, of whom the great majority were deported and murdered during the occupation, and the statue forms part of a landscape of remembrance that includes the famous hiding place a short walk away. Standing before the modest bronze figure, many visitors are moved by the contrast between the ordinariness of the girl and the enormity of what befell her and millions of others. Free, open and set in the everyday bustle of a lively quarter, the monument offers a quiet space for reflection, a reminder woven into the fabric of the city that the victims of history were not abstractions but individuals, each with a name, a face and a story cut short.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Westermarkt, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Opening Date: 01/01/1977