Obj. ID: 53282 Anne Frank statue at Merwedeplein in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2005
Name of Monument
Anne Frank statue, Merwedeplein, Amsterdam
Who/What is Commemorated?
Anne Frank and Jewish Victims from Neighborhood
Description
The bronze smaller-than-life statue, set on a high red granite rectangular base, depicts Anne Frank wearing all the clothes she describes in her diary. The Franks wore as many clothes as possible during their escape to their hiding place, as they could not risk being seen carrying suitcases. Anne looks back toward her home.
Anne wrote: “I was wearing two vests, three pairs of pants, a dress and over that a skirt, a jacket, a raincoat, two pair of stockings, heavy shoes, a cap, a scarf and lots more, I was suffocating even before we left the house, but no one bothered to ask me how I felt ….” (translation from Jewish Amsterdam, p. 234).
Nearby, at 37 Merwedeplein, four stumbling blocks (Stolpersteine) are set in the pavement in front of the Frank family’s former home.
Inscriptions
On the statue base:
ANNE FRANK
1929-1945
Commissioned by
Local citizens’ initiative to Amsterdam ZuiderAmstel district council.
11 image(s)
Height approximately 2 meters (base and statue)
The monument was placed in the park in memory of Anne Frank, who lived with her family in a house at 37 Medwedeplein facing the park from 1933 to 1942. The statue also commemorates the thirteen thousand Jewish neighbors who died in the Holocaust mostly deported and murdered.
The statue is the result of a citizen’s initiative. In 2004, local bookseller Gert-Jan Jimmink submitted a citizens' proposal with a large number of supporting statements to the Amsterdam ZuiderAmstel district council. The statue, designed by Jet Schepp, was unveiled on July 9, 2005 by Mayor Job Cohen.
In 2004, the Frank’s apartment was purchased by the Ymere Housing Corporation and was restored it to its original style, in collaboration with the Anne Frank House. In 2005, the property was rented to the Dutch Foundation for Literature and has since housed foreign writers who cannot work freely in their own country. In 2017, the Anne Frank House took over the house from Ymere, but its use as a writer’s refuge is unchanged.
Anne Frank’s family home
Google Arts & Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/anne-frank’s-family-home-anne-frank-house/NgVBtLmxVrkeKA?hl=en.
Lebovic, Matt, "In Anne Frank's childhood neighborhood, the buildings do not forget," Times of Israel, 21 April 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-anne-franks-childhood-neighborhood-the-buildings-do-not-forget/ (accessed March 5, 2024)
"Memorial Anne Frank Merwedeplein Amsterdam,"
Traces of War, https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/27719/Memorial-Anne-Frank-Merwedeplein-Amsterdam.htm., https://www.tracesofwar.com/ (accessed March 5, 2024)
Stoutenbeek, Jan and Paul Vigeveno. Jewish Amsterdam, trans. By Wendie Shaffer. (Amsterdam-Ghent: Ludion, 2003), pp. 234-236.