Anne Frank's first apartment in Amsterdam to accommodate refugee writers

An apartment in Amsterdam where Anne Frank, the girl who posthumously became famous for her diary, lived for nine years before the German occupation is currently being redecorated and will soon serve as a home and workplace for refugee writers. Anne Frank and her family arrived in Amsterdam in 1933, when she was just four years old, fleeing Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. They lived in the apartment in the Jewish quarter Rivierenbuurt. In 1942, when the anti-Jewish raids started, the Frank family went into hiding in the back part of another house. Now, the apartment is to be prepared for a new purpose. "We've already been housing foreign writers for about seven years,'' explains Maarten Asscher, chairman of the Amsterdam Refugeetown Foundation. His organization is part of the international Cities of Asylum Foundation, which evolved out of the Rushdie Defense Committee. The first candidate to be accommodated will be chosen by the foundation within two months.