15-05-2018

New texts from diary of Anne Frank revealed

The Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, together with the Anne Frank House and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, presented the hidden text on two pages covered up with gummed paper in the first diary of Anne Frank, with its red checked cover.

Thanks to new technology the text on the hidden pages has now been made legible. Over 70 years since the publication of the diary the text of two pages, which Anne Frank wrote in her diary on 28 September 1942, has been published for the first time.

Anne Frank was thirteen years old when, on 6 July 1942, she went into hiding from the Nazis. She reread her diary entries, made improvements and crossed out words and phrases. In her first diary, with its red checked cover, two whole pages are covered up with brown gummed paper.

The covered pages

The covered pages were photographed during a regular check on the condition of the diaries of Anne Frank in 2016. Thanks to image processing technology the text could be deciphered. The texts that are being published for the first time today do not stand in isolation; they form a part of the diary entries that Anne Frank began on 12 June 1942. The texts that have now been revealed are included in the academic research into the diaries of Anne Frank and her development as a writer that the Anne Frank House has been carrying out together with the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands since 2010.

Otto Frank

In his will Otto Frank bequeathed the diaries of his daughter Anne to the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Dutch state. The diaries were given on loan to the Anne Frank House organisation and are permanently exhibited in the Anne Frank House.