linguistic:voice_change, structural:scholar_edition, information:highlighting, structural:reformatting, information:classification
Legacy

On 3 May 1957, a group of Dutch citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the Achterhuis, all unfurnished so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind acrylic glass. The House provides information via the internet and offers exhibitions. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbors, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as rotating exhibits that chronicle aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance around the world. One of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, it received an average of 1.2 million visitors between 2011 and 2020.

In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000 Swiss francs in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs. The Anne Frank Fonds represents the Frank family and administers the rights, inter alia, to the writings of Anne and Otto Frank and the letters of the Frank family. It is the owner of the rights to translations, editions, compilations, and authorised books about Anne Frank and her family. The Fonds educate young people against racism and loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report that year outlined its efforts to contribute on a global level, with support for projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In 1997, the Anne Frank Educational Centre (Jugendbegegnungsstätte Anne Frank) was opened in the Dornbusch neighbourhood of Frankfurt, where Frank lived with her family until 1934. The centre is "a place where both young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to today."

The Merwedeplein apartment, where the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the 2000s. After featuring in a television documentary, the building—in a serious state of disrepair—was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation. Aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions in letters written by Anne Frank, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House and Frank's cousin, Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, contributed to the restoration project. It opened in 2005. Each year, a writer who is unable to write freely in their own country is selected for a year-long tenancy, during which they reside and write in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet El-Mahdi Acherchour.

Anne Frank is included as one of the topics in the Canon of the Netherlands, which was prepared by a committee headed by Frits van Oostrom and presented to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Maria van der Hoeven, in 2006. The Canon is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological summary of Dutch history to be taught in primary schools and the first two years of secondary school in the Netherlands. A revised version, which still includes her as one of the topics, was presented to the Dutch government on 3 October 2007, and approved in 2020.

In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artifacts are Frank's family photographs taken in Germany and the Netherlands and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945, informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.

In November 2007, the Anne Frank tree —by then infected with a fungal disease affecting the tree trunk—was scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling on the surrounding buildings. Dutch economist Arnold Heertje said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews." The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case to stop the felling of the horse chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution. The parties built a steel construction that was expected to prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years. However, it was only three years later, on 23 August 2010, that gale-force winds blew down the tree. Eleven saplings from the tree were distributed to museums, schools, parks, and Holocaust remembrance centres through a project led by the Anne Frank Center USA. The first sapling was planted in April 2013 at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Saplings were also sent to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, the scene of a desegregation battle; Liberty Park (Manhattan), which honours victims of the September 11 attacks; and other sites in the United States. Another horse chestnut tree honouring Frank was planted in 2010 at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama.

Over the years, various films about Anne Frank have been produced. Her life and writings have inspired a diverse group of artists and social commentators to make reference to her in literature, popular music, television, and other media. These include The Anne Frank Ballet by Adam Darius, first performed in 1959, and the choral works Annelies (2005) and The Beauty That Still Remains by Marcus Paus (2015).

The only known footage of Anne Frank herself comes from a silent 20-second film of her next-door neighbor's wedding. She is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to better view the bride and groom at the nine second mark. The couple, who survived the war, gave the film to the Anne Frank House museum, which has posted it to YouTube.

In 1999, Time named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list The Most Important People of the Century, stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity". Philip Roth called her the "lost little daughter" of Franz Kafka. Madame Tussauds wax museum unveiled an exhibit featuring a likeness of Anne Frank in 2012. Asteroid 5535 Annefrank was named in her honour in 1995, after having been discovered in 1942.

As of 2018, there are over 270 schools named after Anne Frank worldwide. 100 of them are in Germany, 89 in France, 45 in Italy, 17 in the Netherlands (among them the 6th Montessori School in Amsterdam which Frank herself attended until 1941), 4 in Brazil, 4 in the United States (among them the Anne Frank Inspire Academy), 2 in Bulgaria and one each in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Hungary, Israel, Nepal, Uruguay and Sweden. In 2020, the first of a series of Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorials was placed adjacent to a high school in Maaleh, Adumim, outside of Jerusalem. In 2021, the second memorial was unveiled in Antigua, Guatemala, and another is in fabrication in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to be opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2022. In 2023, a plan to rename a daycare centre in Tangerhütte, Germany, named for Anne Frank since 1970, was met with international outcry and eventually dropped.

On 25 June 2022, a slideshow Google Doodle was dedicated in honour of Anne Frank marking the 75th anniversary of the publication of her diary.