With no tourists in Amsterdam, locals are discovering the Anne Frank House

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Under normal circumstances, the queue to enter the Anne Frank House stretches far along this capital city’s Prinsengracht canal.  Tourists who had booked their visit at least two months in advance – the only way to guarantee entry — line up at assigned time slots to see the former hiding place of the world’s most famous Holocaust victim.

They wait for 15 minutes and, barring delays, enter in one large group the cramped space where Frank penned the diaries that years after her death would become the bestselling memoir “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

Now, with international tourism shut down across Europe because of the coronavirus pandemic, the square in front of the Netherlands museum is empty and the building looks deserted