Anne Frank. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – A childhood friend of Anne Frank who kept some of the famous diarist’s toys has now donated them to the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam. Toosje Kupers, 83, had kept a tin of marbles, a tea set, and a book that belonged to Frank. The items will go on display Wednesday at the Kunsthal art gallery in Rotterdam.

As children, Frank and Kupers frequently played together. Just before the Frank family left the residential area where they lived, the Merwedeplein, Anne Frank asked Kupers to keep her marbles for a while, Kupers told the Dutch public broadcaster NOS.

“‘I’m worried about my marbles, because I’m scared they might fall into the wrong hands,'” Kupers quoted Anne Frank as telling her.

The Frank family told nearly everyone they knew that they were going to stay with a family in Switzerland, but in fact they went into hiding in a now-famous Amsterdam house. In 1944, the Franks were caught by the Nazis. Anne Frank died of Typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

“So many people know about Anne Frank because of the diary, which was written under such unusual circumstances… [But] the marbles are a reminder that she was just a little girl,” said the Anne Frank House Museum’s head of collections, Teresien da Silva, according to the Associated Press.