Berliner Boersenzeitung - AI-powered tour brings Anne Frank's story to life in Amsterdam

EUR -
AED 4.272706
AFN 80.277121
ALL 97.263968
AMD 445.385554
ANG 2.082293
AOA 1066.868798
ARS 1581.221574
AUD 1.792628
AWG 2.09418
AZN 1.974867
BAM 1.945654
BBD 2.342436
BDT 141.561828
BGN 1.955962
BHD 0.438635
BIF 3433.291644
BMD 1.163433
BND 1.49296
BOB 8.052185
BRL 6.295574
BSD 1.162762
BTN 101.76802
BWP 15.560196
BYN 3.930653
BYR 22803.292516
BZD 2.332607
CAD 1.611675
CDF 3336.72608
CHF 0.936756
CLF 0.028549
CLP 1119.956271
CNY 8.320297
CNH 8.322922
COP 4683.691574
CRC 585.459708
CUC 1.163433
CUP 30.830982
CVE 110.701007
CZK 24.555132
DJF 206.765441
DKK 7.46364
DOP 73.005295
DZD 150.867546
EGP 56.41244
ERN 17.451499
ETB 164.624
FJD 2.636458
FKP 0.864164
GBP 0.863849
GEL 3.135462
GGP 0.864164
GHS 12.797526
GIP 0.864164
GMD 83.185593
GNF 10098.600703
GTQ 8.915777
GYD 243.268796
HKD 9.087589
HNL 30.708857
HRK 7.54743
HTG 152.141238
HUF 397.271166
IDR 18934.004247
ILS 3.913382
IMP 0.864164
INR 101.927053
IQD 1524.097612
IRR 48936.917674
ISK 143.416617
JEP 0.864164
JMD 186.218964
JOD 0.824894
JPY 171.440619
KES 150.662086
KGS 101.649865
KHR 4660.714119
KMF 485.151864
KPW 1047.074341
KRW 1615.217622
KWD 0.355569
KYD 0.968968
KZT 622.515873
LAK 25153.427969
LBP 104191.268606
LKR 351.176341
LRD 235.013864
LSL 20.510786
LTL 3.435316
LVL 0.703749
LYD 6.293688
MAD 10.520925
MDL 19.441043
MGA 5188.912275
MKD 61.611962
MMK 2442.610375
MNT 4181.786015
MOP 9.355696
MRU 46.479006
MUR 53.110968
MVR 17.914432
MWK 2020.883783
MXN 21.726035
MYR 4.898181
MZN 74.401577
NAD 20.511527
NGN 1788.317619
NIO 42.825284
NOK 11.767866
NPR 162.828832
NZD 1.985841
OMR 0.447306
PAB 1.162777
PEN 4.095432
PGK 4.823304
PHP 66.053979
PKR 327.942723
PLN 4.259916
PYG 8427.057215
QAR 4.23577
RON 5.052094
RSD 117.121734
RUB 93.892714
RWF 1682.32454
SAR 4.365094
SBD 9.560008
SCR 16.440063
SDG 698.642243
SEK 11.141856
SGD 1.494506
SHP 0.914276
SLE 27.108909
SLL 24396.612048
SOS 664.900741
SRD 44.477482
STD 24080.720175
STN 24.897472
SVC 10.173948
SYP 15126.861809
SZL 20.511569
THB 37.776351
TJS 11.115871
TMT 4.083651
TND 3.356526
TOP 2.724874
TRY 47.710655
TTD 7.9007
TWD 35.436548
TZS 2914.401023
UAH 48.23314
UGX 4142.488062
USD 1.163433
UYU 46.59702
UZS 14368.400658
VES 162.009994
VND 30604.112737
VUV 140.096052
WST 3.154668
XAF 652.576584
XAG 0.030213
XAU 0.000346
XCD 3.144236
XCG 2.095446
XDR 0.811336
XOF 652.686367
XPF 119.331742
YER 279.427601
ZAR 20.48254
ZMK 10472.280474
ZMW 27.085346
ZWL 374.625045
  • RBGPF

    2.0800

    76

    +2.74%

  • BCE

    -0.2700

    25.22

    -1.07%

  • CMSD

    0.0700

    24.02

    +0.29%

  • RIO

    -0.3600

    62.33

    -0.58%

  • GSK

    -0.5500

    39.64

    -1.39%

  • BCC

    -1.2400

    89.98

    -1.38%

  • NGG

    -0.9200

    70.49

    -1.31%

  • SCS

    -0.1100

    16.39

    -0.67%

  • CMSC

    0.0500

    23.8

    +0.21%

  • AZN

    -1.3100

    79.66

    -1.64%

  • RELX

    -0.6500

    47.79

    -1.36%

  • RYCEF

    0.1400

    14.2

    +0.99%

  • BTI

    -0.7100

    57.8

    -1.23%

  • VOD

    -0.0500

    11.87

    -0.42%

  • JRI

    -0.0200

    13.43

    -0.15%

  • BP

    0.2300

    34.97

    +0.66%

AI-powered tour brings Anne Frank's story to life in Amsterdam
AI-powered tour brings Anne Frank's story to life in Amsterdam / Photo: JOHN THYS - AFP

AI-powered tour brings Anne Frank's story to life in Amsterdam

Amsterdam, 1941. Every day, young Anne Frank and her sister Margot walked 2.5 kilometres to school, as Nazi anti-Jewish laws barred them from using public transport or bicycles.

Text size:

In 2025, using Artificial Intelligence, a new immersive guided tour traces the route of this Amsterdam icon through the city, offering an interactive smartphone reconstruction of the Dutch Jewish experience under Nazi occupation.

"We created this product to bring Anne Frank closer to more people," said Moti Erdeapel, director of CityFans, the tourism-tech firm behind the project.

"The Anne Frank House, the museum, is a very small place and it has limited capacity, so a lot of people come here and get disappointed because they didn't get to visit Anne Frank," he said.

Each year, more than one million tourists visit the narrow house and annex where the Jewish girl and her family hid from the Nazis for two years.

To visit the place where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, visitors must book six weeks in advance. Tickets sell out fast.

All that is required for the virtual tour is a mobile phone and a pair of headphones. A unique code grants access to a seven-kilometre (four-mile), 12-stop route.

An audio narrative guides the visitor, along with lifelike animations generated by AI using data from the Anne Frank Institute, the city of Amsterdam and the Holocaust museum.

- 'Incredible people' -

"We tried to dig up stories that maybe most people don't really know but are incredible, people that really risked their lives to save children and to smuggle them out of the Nazis' hands into hiding," Erdeapel said.

One stop features the former home of Miep Gies, the Dutch Catholic who helped hide the Frank family. Her face is brought to life using archive photographs and digital animation.

In the De Pijp district, the tour reveals that a coffeeshop now occupies the site of the former Koco ice cream parlour.

Run by German-Jewish refugees, the shop helped spark the only protest in Amsterdam against Nazi persecution of Jews -- a demonstration that was violently crushed.

"One of the things that make it close to heart is not only that it's such an important story for Amsterdam, but also for me personally, coming from a family of Holocaust survivors," said Erdeapel, who is of Polish and Hungarian Jewish descent.

"My grandparents survived the Holocaust, a lot of the family members did, and I grew up with these stories about the Holocaust and about people that didn't make it back," said the 45-year-old Amsterdam resident.

Though he stresses the importance of museums and the diary, Erdeapel sees this guided tour as a way to tell Anne Frank's story to a new, tech-savvy generation.

"It's really important that we do good research and we work on storytelling and there's a human aspect to the creation," he said.

"If you have a deep process to develop this product, I think AI is just going to make things more beautiful and exciting and immersive for everyone."

Around 107,000 Dutch Jews and refugees were deported during World War II. Of these, 102,000 -- including Anne Frank -- were killed, roughly 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population.

(Y.Berger--BBZ)