ROTTERDAMFeb. 5 (UPI) -- Toosje Kupers was shuffling through her belongings last year when she rediscovered the marbles, tea set and book that her childhood friend had given her more than 70 years ago.
That childhood friend happened to be Anne Frank, the Holocaust victim whose wartime diary became a post-war sensation when it was published by her father in 1947.
Kupers, now 83, played with Frank in Amsterdam before Frank and her family went into hiding in a concealed "Annexe." Space was limited, so Frank asked Kuypers to keep watch over her toys.
"For children during that time, marbles were a treasure," Teresien da Silva, of the Anne Frank House Museum, told CNN. "They worked very hard to win them."
"She immediately contacted us," da Silva said of Kupers' discovery. "We were thrilled that the marbles survived and had been kept. She decided to give everything to the Anne Frank House -- the book, the tea set and the marbles."
The book and the tea set have already gone on display at the Anne Frank House, but the marbles first appeared at the The Second World War in 100 Objects exhibition in Rotterdam on Tuesday.
Kupers family also took care of the Frank family cat, Moortje, mentioned by Frank in her diary.
[CNN, AnneFrank.org]
