oa EMIGRANTEN ROND HET ACHTER-HUIS VAN ANNE FRANK

The story of Anne Frank, her family and her companions, hiding from persecution by the Nazi regime, is a well-known and – at a first glance – very Dutch one. The main divide between those in hiding and their helpers was that between being Jewish and being non-Jewish, which in those precarious times was of course the essential ‘divide’ imposed on the people of occupied Europe. But a closer look at the group of people around Anne seen from the perspective of migration and (national) identity produces different dividing lines and insights. Their life stories, converging in that one Amsterdam warehouse, ref lect many aspects of early twentieth-century European history.