A new find in the Anne Frank heritage collection goes on show at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam from Tuesday – the marbles she gave to a girl who lived next door when Anne and her family went into hiding.

‘To me they were just a few marbles,’ 83-year-old Toosje Kupers told Nos television, which has now donated the box to the Anne Frank Huis organisation.

Kupers kept the marbles in their box in a cupboard for years, only bringing them out occasionally for her grandchildren. She earlier loaned a toy tea set and a book given to her by Anne to an exhibition,

Evidence

Curator Teresien da Silva told the broadcaster finding the marbles is a dream. ‘We’ve got pictures of Anne playing on the Merwedeplein but it is fantastic to have her original marble box.’

The marbles, she says, are the first physical evidence that Anne could play outside without a care in 1942.

The box and marbles take centre stage in a new exhibition at the Kunsthal entitled ‘The Second World War in 100 objects’ which will be opened by king Willem-Alexander on Tuesday.

Other exhibits include a jumper knitted from dog hair, made during the 1944-45 hunger winter and glasses used as a disguise by resistance heroine Hannie Schaft.