Dutch king visits renewed Anne Frank House museum

AMSTERDAM >> Dutch King WillemAlexander visited the Anne Frank House museum Thursday after a twoyear reboot to give the building a new entrance hall, redesigned exhibition spaces and a new way of telling the story of the teenage Jewish diarist.

The aim of renewing the landmark museum was to “provide more information about the historical context and background of the story we represent, which is the story of Anne Frank,” executive director Ronald Leopold said Wednesday night at a press preview of the renewed museum.

What hasn’t changed is the museum’s moving centerpiece: the Spartan secret annex, reached via a door concealed behind a bookcase, where Anne wrote her world-famous diary as she, her family and four other Jews hid for two years from Nazis during World War II until they were arrested and deported to concentration camps.

“Of course we did not change the hiding place itself — the annex — which is the most authentic place where Anne Frank was in hiding and where she wrote the diary,” Leopold said.

The museum believes that telling Anne’s story remains relevant more than 60 years after she and her sister both perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after contracting typhus.

On Wednesday, the head of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, warned at a conference in Vienna that “Jewish communities in Europe are increasingly concerned about their security and pessimistic about their future.”

Leopold said the museum, which receives 1.2 million visitors annually, has an important role to play in combatting anti-Semitism.

“We run a museum and we know how powerful the influence of this museum is,” he said. “A visit ... really has a huge impact on young people and encourages them to fight discrimination,