New 'walk-through' Anne Frank museum to open in South Carolina

A new Anne Frank museum is opening at the University of South Carolina, which will be the first in North America and the fourth in the world where visitors can walk through the famed story of the teenage Holocaust victim.

"The Anne Frank Center at USC is unlike anything the university has ever done before," interim university president Harris Pastides said during an announcement ceremony Tuesday, according to news outlets. "Through the eyes of this little girl, who still lives, I would argue, we can change the world."

The 98.5-square-metre centre on the Columbia campus features a rendering of the attic where the girl's Jewish family hid from the Nazis for more than two years during the Second World War. That exhibit includes a reproduction of the desk where Frank wrote what was eventually published as The Diary of a Young Girl, which has been translated into 70 languages.

While the museum shares the history of the Holocaust, it also tells Frank's story through the lens of the American Jim Crow and civil rights eras. A reference is made to Black U.S. track star Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, according to Charleston newspaper, The Post and Courier. The tour also mentions the story of Emmett Till, a Black teenager who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

All the artifacts for the museum were provided by the original Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which preserved the secret annex where the Franks hid. Other partner sites are located in Berlin, London and Buenos Aires.

Public group tours are scheduled to start Sept. 15. Admission will be free for University of South Carolina students, and it's suggested that members of the general public make donations.