Fire has destroyed a barracks in the Netherlands through which an estimated 100,000 Jews passed on their way to the Nazi death camps during World War II. Teenager Anne Frank, the author of the later famous ‘Anne Frank - Diary of a Young Girl’, was one of them. The fire on Saturday completely destroyed the barracks at Westerbork, near the northern Dutch city of Groningen.
A museum dedicated to Frank had planned to take over the building later this year. Dirk Mulder, director of the Holocaust memorial at Westerbork, told AFP: "It was an industrial warehouse where batteries were dismantled. Anne Frank and her sister Margo worked there for about four weeks." Since 1957 the barracks had been used as an agricultural warehouse. Published in more than 70 languages since its discovery and first release in 1947, Anne Frank's diary remains one of the world's most-read books.
