Exhibit at Griffin Museum of Science and Industry re-creates Anne Frank's hidden annex

A historical exhibit at Chicago's Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is giving visitors a chance to walk through a re-creation of Anne Frank's hidden annex.

"Anne Frank The Exhibition" is described by the museum as an "immersive, full-scale re-creation" of the space where Anne Frank, her family, and four other Jewish inhabitants resided in hiding while the Nazis occupied the Netherlands.

The annex is where Anne Frank wrote her world-famous diary.

The museum experience includes more than 130 artifacts from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Visitors can explore Anne's life story, from her early childhood in Frankfurt, Germany, through the rise of the Nazis and the spread of antisemitism through Europe, to the family's move to Amsterdam — where Anne lived for almost 10 years, with the final two years in hiding.

Anne and her family were arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and taken to concentration camps.

Anne Frank died at 15 years old, but the exhibit's appearance in Chicago marks what would have been her 97th birthday.

"This was personal to me," said Griffin MSI visitor Annalise Lasky. "I saw bits and pieces of my normal life that she experienced, and it was lots of things that brought me to tears."

The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is the first museum in the Midwest to host the exhibit, and only the second in the U.S. The exhibition previously appeared at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.