On September 8, 2025 we drove to New York City to see the replica of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, housed in the Center for Jewish History at 15 W. 16th Street. The well-curated exhibit, featuring a full-size recreation of the Annex, opened on January 27, 2025, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The closing dates for the exhibit have continuously been updated. We were told that in the morning on the day we were there, they announced another extension through February 1, 2026.

On the quiet drive home, I captured a clearly centered photo of the Freedom Tower boldly sticking out in the clear sky, giving us a bird’s-eye view. I sent the picture of the exhibit poster and one of the Freedom Tower to my Facebook friends with a note simply stating, “NYC has it all.”

Boy, the juxtaposition of things. One minute we were viewing a replica of Anne Frank’s room and the desk where she wrote her world-famous diary while in hiding from the nazis, and the next, we were seeing the tower built after the World Trade Center, where I once worked, was destroyed by terrorists. To see all that on a clear day had our heads spinning from grappling with the thought of evil to evil and resilience to fortitude.

A copy of Life Magazine from 2021, The Diary Endures, Anne Frank, Her Life and Her Legacy, with an introduction by President Bill Clinton, still sits on a book rack in our living room. The article took on new meaning after visiting the museum exhibit.

One particularly poignant section reads, “As to what really happened to Anne and her family, her diary would prove to be the document that would tell the world the truth. That book became the teenager’s constant companion, confidante, and friend. In it she detailed the day-to-day life of what she called the Achterhuis, literally the “back house,” known in English as the Secret Annex.

“That secret home was reached through Opekta’s archives, accessed by way of a movable bookcase that Bep’s father, Johan Voskuijl, had set on hinges. This entrance opened onto a small 540-square-foot living space…”

The exhibit soundtrack acknowledges that Anne wanted to write and become a journalist. The article in Life magazine reveals, “As the months passed, moments of hope and the constant undercurrent of fear battled for space in the pages of Anne’s diary.”

As a writer and journalist, I could hunker down in a hiding spot accessible only from the closet to the rafters of our house. See What Lurks in the Crawl Space? dated November 4, 2025, and Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, dated November 11, 2025, at sharonmarkcohen.com. Nestling among the empty beer bottles may give me a stronger sense of the horrors of the evil still being perpetrated in the world.