France’s first lady Brigitte Macron said Wednesday that she was “touched” after visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam during a state visit to the Netherlands.
Dutch Queen Maxima accompanied Macron to tour the canalside house where the teenage Jewish diarist hid from Nazis occupiers during World War II.
The wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, a former teacher who turns 70 on Thursday, left a message in the guest book saying “Anne definitely touched our hearts”, the museum said on Twitter.
Brigitte Macron and the queen inspected the bookcase leading to the famed secret annexe, the hidden part of the house where Anne and her family lived from 1942 to 1944.
Betrayed and later arrested by the Gestapo, the Franks were deported from the Netherlands, with Anne, 15, and her sister Margot, 19, dying of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen death camp in February 1945. Their mother Edith died at Auschwitz.
Her father Otto Frank survived and made it his life’s work to publish his daughter’s diary, which has since sold 30 million copies.
“I want to thank Her Majesty for receiving us with such friendship,” the French first lady told reporters alongside the Argentinian-born Queen Maxima, with whom she also visited a mental health charity.
Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron wrapped up their two-day state visit — during which protesters twice targeted the French leader over his pensions reforms — on Wednesday evening.