Anne Frank memorabilia leaves Basel

Eight decades after Anne Frank and her family fled Germany, her estate is returning from Basel to Frankfurt, the place of her birth.

The Anne Frank-Fonds, a Basel-based foundation set up by her father Otto Frank, said several hundred objects and documents, including paintings, photos, furniture and letters, would be transferred to the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt by 2015.

Anne Frank died aged 15 in March 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, having lived most of her life in Amsterdam. From July 1942 to August 1944 she and her family lived in hiding in a secret annex.

Her diary, which was found and published after her death, will remain in Amsterdam.

After the war, her father – the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust – moved to Switzerland to be near his Swiss relatives. Birsfelden, the Basel suburb where he lived until his death in 1980, unveiled an Anne Frank square in June 2009.

“Today we come full circle,” said Buddy Elias, her cousin and only living near relative, who devotes a lot of time to the Anne Frank-Fonds. “We’re tying the roots of the family with the future.”