People associated with Anne Frank

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Anne Frank (June 12, 1929 – c. March 1945) was a Jewish girl who, along with her family and four other people, hid in rooms at the back of her father's Amsterdam company during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. Helped by several trusted employees of the company, the group survived in the achterhuis (literally "back-house", usually translated as "secret annexe") for more than two years before they were betrayed. Anne kept a diary from June 12, 1942 until August 1st, 1944, three days before the residents of the annexe were betrayed. Anne mentioned several times in her writing that her sister Margot Frank also kept a diary, but no trace of Margot's diary has ever been found.

After spending time in both Westerbork and Auschwitz concentration camps, Anne and her elder sister Margot were eventually transported to Bergen-Belsen where they both died during a typhus epidemic between late February and the middle of March 1945.

Their father Otto Frank survived the war, and upon his return to Amsterdam was given the diary his daughter had kept during their period of confinement. The diary was first published in 1947, and by virtue of world-wide sales since then, it has become one of the most widely read books in history. It is recognised both for its historical value as a document of the Holocaust, as well as for the high quality of writing displayed by so young an author.

Contents

[edit] The Other occupants of the achterhuis

  • Otto Frank remained in Auschwitz with other sick prisoners and survived. In 1953 he married Elfride 'Fritzi' Markovits-Geiringer, an Auschwitz survivor who had lost her husband and son in Auschwitz, and whose daughter Eva, also a survivor, had been acquainted with the Frank sisters (see below). Otto Frank devoted his life to spreading the message of his daughter and her diary, as well as defending it against Neo-Nazi claims that it was a forgery or fake. He died in Birsfelden, Switzerland from lung cancer, August 19, 1980. His widow, Fritzi, continued his work until her death in October, 1998.
  • Edith Frank-Holländer, Anne and Margot's mother, was left behind in Auschwitz-Birkenau when her daughters and Auguste van Pels were transferred to Bergen Belsen, as her health had started to deteriorate. Witnesses reported that her despair at being separated from her family led to an emotional breakdown. They described her searching for her daughters endlessly and said that she seemed to not understand that they had gone, although she had seen them board the train that took them out of the camp. They also said that she began to hoard what little food she could obtain, hiding it under her bunk to give to Anne and Margot when she saw them. They said that Edith Frank told them Anne and Margot needed the food more than she did, and therefore she refused to eat it. She died January 6, 1945 from starvation.
  • Hermann van Pels: died in Auschwitz. He was the only member of the group to be gassed, however, according to eyewitness testimony, this did not happen on the day of his arrival there. Sol de Liema, an inmate at Auschwitz who knew both Otto Frank and van Pels said that after two or three days in the camp, Herman van Pels mentally "gave up", the beginning of the end for any concentration camp inmate. He later injured his thumb on work detail, and requested to be sent to the sick barracks. Soon after that, during a "sweep" of the sick barracks for selection, he was sent to the gas chambers. This occurred about three weeks after his arrival at Auschwitz, and his selection was witnessed by both his son Peter, and Otto Frank.
  • Auguste van Pels: Both her date and place of death are unknown but witnesses testified that she was with the Frank sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen, but that she was not present when they died in February/March. She is therefore assumed to have been transferred before March 1945, to Buchenwald, then to the Theresienstadt ghetto. She is believed to have died either en route to Theresienstadt, or shortly after her arrival there.
  • Peter van Pels: (November 8, 1926 – May 5, 1945), died in Mauthausen after a death march. Otto Frank had protected him during their period of imprisonment together, as the two men had been assigned to the same work group. Frank later stated that he had urged Peter to hide in Auschwitz and remain behind with him, rather than set out on the forced march. Peter decided that he would have a better chance of survival if he joined the march. His death at the age of eighteen occurred three days before the liberation of Mauthausen.

[edit] The helpers

  • Jan Gies, husband of Miep, was, for part of the war, a member of the Dutch Underground, and was able to procure things for the people in the annexe that would have been almost impossible any other way. Jan died January 26, 1993 in Amsterdam.
  • Johannes Kleiman spent seven weeks in a work camp after his arrest, and was released after intervention from the Red Cross. He returned to Opekta, and took over the firm when Otto Frank moved to Basel in 1952. He died in 1959 at his office desk, at the age of sixty-three.
  • Bep Voskuijl left Opekta shortly after the war and married in 1946. While she did grant an interview to a Dutch magazine some years after the war, she mostly shunned publicity. But Bep did keep her own scrapbook of Anne-related articles throughout her life,and she named her own daughter "Anna", in honor of Anne. She died in Amsterdam on May 6, 1983.
  • Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl (father of Bep) was lauded constantly by the eight in hiding as a tremendous help with all matters during their early days in the achterhuis. However, his ill health was often mentioned by Anne in her diary, and he became incapacitated after a diagnosis of cancer. He died of the disease, in late November, 1945.

[edit] Friends and extended family

  • Hannah Goslar - Known to her childhood friends as "Hanneli" or "Lies", Hannah was Anne's oldest friend, along with Sanne Ledermann. While Hannah was in Belsen, she met Auguste van Pels by asking through a hay-filled barbed wire fence if anyone who could hear her voice spoke Dutch. Auguste van Pels answered her, and remembered Hannah from peacetime in Amsterdam. Mrs. van Pels then told her that Anne was a prisoner in the section of the camp she herself was in. Hannah was astonished, as she, like most people back in Amsterdam, believed the Franks had escaped to Switzerland. Hannah was able to talk to Anne several times through the barrier, and to toss some essentials over it for her. Soon after, Anne's contingent of prisoners was moved, and Hannah never heard from her again. Hannah and her little sister Gabi were the only members of their family to survive the war, and Hannah was near death from typhus and tuberculosis when the Russians liberated the train in which she and Gabi were being transported, reportedly to Theresienstadt. Hannah now lives in Israel, is a nurse, and had ten grandchildren as of the mid-1990s.
  • Susanne "Sanne" Ledermann was Anne's constant companion from the time of her arrival in Amsterdam, and is mentioned several times at the beginning of the diary. She was considered the "quiet" one of the trio of "Anne, Hanne and Sanne". She was very intelligent, and according to Anne, very facile with poetry. Sanne's full first name is variously listed in different sources as both "Susanne" and "Susanna". Only her friends called her "Sanne", her family using the more Germanic "Susi". After his return to Amsterdam, Otto Frank learned that Sanne and her parents Franz and Ilse were arrested on June 20, 1943. Sanne and her parents were sent first to Westerbork, then on November 16 to Auschwitz, where all three were gassed upon arrival. Sanne's sister Barbara Ledermann, who was a friend of Margot, had, through contacts in the Dutch Underground, acquired an Aryan ID card (becoming "Barbara Waarts") and worked as a courier for the Underground. She survived the war and later married the Nobel prize winning biochemist Martin Rodbell.
  • Jacqueline van Maarsen was Anne's "best" friend at the time the Frank family went into hiding. Jacque sincerely liked Anne, but found her at times too demanding in her friendship. Anne, in her diary later, was remorseful for her own attitude toward Jacque, regarding with better understanding Jacque's desire to have other close girlfriends as well - "I just want to apologize and explain things", Anne wrote. After two and a half months in hiding, Anne composed a farewell letter to Jacque in her diary, vowing her lifelong friendship. Jacque could only read this letter much later, after the publication of the diary. Jacque's French-born mother was a Christian, and that, along with several other extenuating circumstances, combined to get the "J" (for "Jew") removed from the family's identification cards. The van Maarsens were thus able to live out the war years in Amsterdam. Jacque later married her childhood sweetheart, and still lives in Amsterdam, where she is an award-winning bookbinder.
  • Nannette "Nanny" Blitz was another schoolmate of Anne's. While they were not always on the best of terms during school days (their personalities were much too similar) Nanny had been invited to Anne's 13th birthday party, and when they met in Bergen-Belsen, their reunion was enthusiastic. With prisoners constantly being shifted around in the huge camp, Nanny later lost track of Anne. Nannette was the only member of her family to survive the war. While Nanny was recovering from tuberculosis in hospital immediately after the war, Otto Frank got in touch with her, and she was able to write and give him some information about Anne and Margot's final weeks.
  • Ilse Wagner, whom Jacque van Maarsen called "a sweet and sensible girl", is mentioned several times in the early part of the diary. Her family had a ping pong set, and Anne and Margot frequently went to their house to play. Wagner was the first of Anne's circle of friends to be deported. Along with her mother and grandmother, she was sent to Westerbork in January of 1943, then to Sobibór extermination camp, where all three were gassed upon arrival on April 2, 1943.
  • Lutz Peter Schiff - For all the admiring boys Anne was surrounded with during her school days, she said repeatedly in her diary that the only one she deeply cared about was Peter Schiff, whom she called "Petel". He was three years older than Anne, and they had, according to Anne, been "inseparable" during the summer of 1940, when Anne was 11. Then, Peter changed addresses, and a new acquaintance slightly older than Peter convinced him Anne was "just a child". Anne had several vivid dreams of Peter while in hiding, writing about them in her diary, and realized herself that she saw Peter van Pels at least partially as a surrogate for Peter Schiff. Anne implies in her diary (January 12, 1944) that Peter gave her a pendant as a gift, which she cherished from then on. Peter was also a prisoner at Bergen-Belsen, though he was transported from there to Auschwitz before Anne and Margot arrived at Belsen. It is known for certain that he died in Auschwitz, although the exact date of his death is unclear.
  • Helmuth "Hello" Silberberg was the boy Anne was closest to at the time her family went into hiding, though they had only known each other about two weeks at that time. His grandfather, who disliked the name Helmuth, dubbed him "Hello". He was 16, and adored Anne, but she wrote in her diary that she was "not in love with Hello, he is just a friend, or as mummy would say, one of my 'beaux' ". Hello had been living in Amsterdam with his grandparents, but by a very convoluted series of events, including several narrow escapes from the Nazis, he was able eventually to reunite with his parents in Belgium. Belgium was also an occupied country, however, and he and his family were still "in hiding", though not under circumstances as difficult as the Franks. The town where the Silberbergs were hiding was liberated on September 3rd, 1944, and Hello was free - tragically on the same day that Anne and her family left on the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Hello emigrated to the United States after the war, and is today known as Ed Silverberg.
  • Eva Geiringer shared an amazingly similar history to Anne. The Geiringers lived on the opposite side of Merwedeplein, the street where the Frank's apartment was located, and Eva and Anne were almost exactly the same age. Eva was a good friend of Sanne Ledermann, and she also knew both Anne and Margot. Eva described herself as an out-and-out tomboy, and hence she was both puzzled by, and in awe of, Anne's fashion sense, worldliness, and fascination with boys. But Anne had introduced Eva to her father when the Geiringers first came to Amsterdam "so you can speak German with someone" as Anne said, and Eva never forgot Otto's kindness to her. Though they did know each other on a first-name basis, Eva and Anne had, aside from Sanne Ledermann, different groups of friends, and they were not especially close. Her brother Heinz was called up for deportation to labor camp on the same day as Margot Frank and the Geiringers went into hiding at the same time the Franks did, though the Geiringer family split into two groups to do so. Though hiding in two separate locations, all four of the Geiringers were betrayed on the same day, about three months before the Frank family. Eva survived Auschwitz, and when the Russians liberated the women's camp, she walked to the men's camp to look for her father and brother, finding out much later that they had not survived the prisoner march out of Auschwitz. In the sick barracks of the men's camp, she recognized Otto Frank, who had a warm reunion with her. Eight years later, Otto married Eva's widowed mother Fritzi, thereby making Eva a stepsister of Anne. Eva later wrote her autobiography "Eva's Story" which served as the inspiration for the development of a very popular multimedia stage presentation about the Holocaust called "And Then They Came for Me".
  • Mary Bos was a schoolmate from the Montessori school. She was an invited guest at Anne's tenth birthday party, and in the well-known photo of that gathering, she is the very slender girl third from the right. Mary was a gifted artist whose drawings and paintings were much admired by her peers. She is mentioned in passing in Anne's diary, when Anne writes of dreaming about Peter Schiff. She and Peter are looking "at a book of drawings by Mary Bos". Little else is known about Mary, but it is known that she did survive the war.
  • Käthe "Kitty" Egyedi: Kitty was another lifelong friend of Anne's, and was, like Mary Bos, a fine artist. Schoolmates at Montessori, Anne and Kitty attended different schools after sixth grade, and hence they had drifted apart somewhat. But shortly before the Franks went into hiding, Kitty visited Anne one day when Anne was in bed with a slight fever. They chatted the whole afternoon, and Kitty was impressed that the shrill and boy-crazy friend she remembered from Monstessori school had begun to mature into a somewhat quieter and more thoughtful girl. This drew them closer together again. In the picture of Anne's 10th birthday referenced above under "Mary Bos", Kitty is the girl in the center with the dark pleated skirt. Kitty never felt that Anne was specifically thinking of her when she addressed her diary passages to "Kitty", and most Anne scholars and biographers, who believe Anne borrowed the name from the Joop ter Heul books, agree. Kitty and her family survived internment at Theresienstadt, and she became a dentist after the war.
  • Lucia "Lucie" van Dijk was a Christian friend from Montessori school. Lucie's mother was an adamant National Socialist until the end of the war, but Lucie's disillusioned father left the party in 1942. Lucie was briefly a rather conflicted and nervous member of the "Jeugdstorm" (Nazi youth group) but between her father's abandonment of the party, and her grandmothers absolute abhorrance of anything connected with National Socialism, Lucie dropped out of the Jeugdstorm in late 1942. She married after the war and has lived her whole life in Amsterdam. In the group picture of Anne's tenth birthday, Lucie is the girl on the extreme left.
  • Rie "Ietje" Swillens was another good friend of Anne's all the way through Montessori school. Ietje was the girl that Anne breathlessly shared the news with concerning one of her uncles who had been arrested by the Nazis and sent to labor camp (he later was released and emigrated to the United States.) Being Christian, Ietje's family was able to live out the war in Amsterdam. She became a teacher in later years, and today lives in Amstelveen, outside of Amsterdam. She is the girl second from right in the tenth birthday picture.
  • Juultje Ketellaper and Martha van den Berg are two other childhood friends of Anne who appear in the picture of Anne's tenth birthday party. Very little is known about either girl. Juultje, the very tall girl near the center, was gassed by the Nazis in Sobibór. Martha, on the far right in the photograph, survived the war.
  • Hannelore "Hansi" Klein (Laureen Nussbaum) was exactly midway in age between Anne and Margot. Hansi was an exception among those who knew Anne - she was rather indifferent about Anne, idolizing her sister Margot instead. But Anne, Hansi, and her two sisters performed in a holiday play about a vain princess who is punished with a long nose for her vanity, until she sees the error of her ways. Anne played the princess, and Hansi noted that she played the role to perfection, and had "natural charisma". Most people felt that Margot was the more beautiful of the Frank sisters, but Hansi observed that Anne, in her opinion, was prettier than Margot because "she was always smiling". Aside from those anecdotes, however, Hansi thought of Anne primarily as a noisy chatterbox, and "a shrimp", and was surprised and impressed with Anne's inner depth upon reading the diary much later. Hansi married a young physician after the war, and upon emigrating to America, changed her first name to "Laureen", and was a professor at an Oregon university.
  • Bernhard (Bernd) "Buddy" Elias was a cousin of Anne's who lived in Switzerland, and a great favorite of hers. Four years older than Anne (and hence, even older than Margot) his rollicking sense of fun matched Anne's temperament perfectly, and he much preferred Anne as a playmate to the staid and proper Margot. Everyone called him "Buddy" except Anne, who always called him "Bernd". He was a very talented ice skater, which Anne hugely admired. She even wrote an imaginary movie plot in her diary where she would skate with Bernd, including a sketch of the costume she would wear. Many years later he became the head of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel.
  • Charlotta Kaletta, the common law wife of Fritz Pfeffer was not Jewish and therefore was able to remain in her Amsterdam apartment during the occupation. Miep Gies was especially touched by the devotion Pfeffer and Kaletta displayed to each other, and frequently passed letters from one to the other, an act which the other members of the household viewed as imprudent, but which she felt was important. Kaletta's Jewish husband and their son both died in Auschwitz, but she held hope for some time after the war's end that Pfeffer had survived. When she learned of his death, she married him posthumously, Otto Frank making the arrangements for her. Frank was always sympathetic to her, and continued to offer her assistance, but in the mid-1950s she severed all contact with him and with Miep and Jan Gies, because she was offended by the unflattering depiction of Pfeffer in Anne's diary. She died in Amsterdam, June 13, 1985.
  • Werner Pfeffer was Fritz Pfeffer's son and was approximately the same age as Anne Frank. After his parents divorced, Werner was raised by his father, until his father felt it was too dangerous for him to remain in Germany, and in 1938 sent him to London to live with his uncle. By the end of the war he had lost most of his close family, including his father, and his mother, who had died in Theriesienstadt. Werner was never able to tolerate Kaletta, and so, with the deaths of his parents, made the decision to move to the United States. He settled in California and changed his name to Peter Pepper. He founded a quite successful office supply business. In December, 1994, during the production of the documentary Anne Frank Remembered, Pepper was able to meet Miep Gies for the first time, where he expressed his thanks to her for attempting to save his father's life. Pepper died of cancer just two months later.
  • Several members of the Frank and Holländer families, including Otto's mother and brothers and Edith's two brothers fled from Germany to Switzerland in the 1930s, and all who did so, survived the war. In his later years, Otto Frank lamented his decision to take his family to the Netherlands.

[edit] Arresting officer

  • Karl Silberbauer was the Sicherheitsdienst (Nazi Security Service) officer who arrested Anne Frank and her family in their hiding place in 1944. [1] He was tracked down and identified as the arresting officer in October 1963 by the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Although his memories of the arrest were notably vivid, Silberbauer had not been told by his superiors who had made the tip-off, only that it came from a 'reliable source', and was unable to provide any information that would further a police investigation. Given Otto Frank's crucial declaration that Silberbauer had obviously acted on orders and behaved correctly and without cruelty during the arrest, judicial investigation of Silberbauer was dropped. Silberbauer's confession helped discredit claims that The Diary of Anne Frank was a forgery.

[edit] References

  • Lee, Carol Ann (2000). The Biography of Anne Frank – Roses from the Earth. Viking. ISBN 0-7089-9174-2.
  • Müller, Melissa; Kimber, Rita & Kimber, Robert (translators); With a note from Miep Gies (2000). Anne Frank – The Biography. Metropolitan books. ISBN 0-7475-4523-5.
  • The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, Anne Frank, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold Van der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, compiled by H. J. J. Hardy, second edition, Doubleday 2003.ISBN 0-385-50847-6.
  • Eva Schloss, with Eveyln Julia Kent (1988). Eva's Story. Castle-Kent. ISBN 0-9523716-9-3
  • Jacqueline van Maarsen (1996). My Friend Anne Frank. Vantage Press. ISBN 0-533-12013-6
  • Dutch Jewry Search http://dutchjewry.huji.ac.il/maineng/search.html

[edit] See also

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