Anne Frank House sets up channel on YouTube

Picture of Anne FrankAmsterdam  - The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam on Wednesday set up on YouTube a site to show images of the young Jewish girl whose story became symbolic of the horror of the Holocaust.

"Today the Anne Frank House is launching the official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube containing existing and new images about Anne Frank," a statement by the house said.

"With the Anne Frank Channel on YouTube, people around the world will be able to explore the life and significance of Anne Frank through unique images," it added.

The YouTube site highlights a film clip dated June 22, 1941 in which for a few seconds Anne Frank is seen on a balcony watching a newlywed couple on the street below. It is the only known existing film footage of the girl.

The site also features a film in which South Africa's anti- apartheid icon Nelson Mandela talks about the strength he derived from Anne Franks diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island.

The statement said that with the YouTube site, visitors can watch the development of a virtual museum which is to be launched April 28, 2010 as part of activities marking the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Anne Frank House museum.

Anne Frank and her family originated from the German city of Frankfurt and fled to Amsterdam to try to escape the Nazis.

After Germany occupied the Netherlands, the family went into hiding at the Prinsengracht 263 address - today the site of the Anne Frank House. It was during this time that the young girl wrote her famous diary about the family's life in hiding which was published in 1947 and has since been translated into over 70 languages.

The Frank family was betrayed in August 1944 and deported to a German concentration camp. At age 15, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp in March 1945, just a few weeks before British forces arrived to liberate the camp.  dpa