Victor Kugler
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Victor Kugler (June 5, 1900, Hohenelbe - December 16, 1981, Toronto) was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary he was referred to under the name 'Mr Kraler'.
Born in Hohenelbe in the German-speaking region of Köninggrätz, Austria-Hungary (now Vrchlabí in the Czech Republic), he joined the Austrian Navy during the First World War once his education was completed but was discharged in 1918 after being wounded. He moved to Germany and worked as an electrician, then in 1920 moved to Utrecht, Holland to work for a company selling pectin. He joined the Amsterdam branch of Opekta as Otto Frank's deputy in 1924. He became a Dutch citizen in May 1938. In 1940 this allowed him to prevent the Nazi confiscation of Opekta and he accepted the directorship the business, renamed Gies and Co, from Otto Frank. He and his wife Laura Maria Buntenbach-Kugler (May 10, 1895 - December 6, 1952) lived in Hilversum during the war, a distance of about sixteen miles from Amsterdam.
From July 1942 to August 1944 he aided his colleagues Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl in the concealment of eight people, including Anne Frank in a sealed-off annexe in their office premises on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht. He was arrested by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944, after an unknown informant betrayed them.
He was interrogated at the Gestapo Headquarters on the Euterpestraat, then transferred the same day to a prison for Jews and 'political prisoners' awaiting deportation on the Amstelveenseweg. On September 7 he was moved to the prison on Weteringschans, in a cell with people sentenced to death. This was followed, four days later on September 11, by a transport to a concentration camp in Amersfoort where he was selected for transport to Germany. on September 17 the Amersfoort train station was destroyed in a bombing (Arnhem Air Raid) and on September 26, he and around 1100 other men were taken to Zwolle for forced labour, digging anti-tank trenches. Kugler was moved again on December 30, 1944, to Wageningen for forced labour digging under the German S.A. (Brownshirts or Storm Troopers) until March 28, 1945, when some 600 prisoners were marched from Wageningen through Renkum, Heelsum, Oosterbeek, Arnhem, and Westervoort, to Zevenaar with the intention of going on to Germany the following day. There was a bombing raid during the march and Kugler took advantage of the confusion to escape. He was hidden by a farmer for a few days, borrowed a bicycle and made his way back to Hilversum, which he reached in April 1945. He hid there until the liberation of the Netherlands on May 5, 1945.
His wife, Laura Kugler, died on December 6, 1952 and three years later he married Lucie (Loes) van Langen and they moved to Canada, where his brother, sister and mother already resided.
In 1973 he received the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous and in 1977 the Canadian Anti-Defamation League awarded him a 10,000 dollar prize in recognition for his assistance in the hiding of the Frank and van Pels families.
[edit] References and further reading
- Kardonne, Rick 2008, "Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank, Gefen Publishing House. ISBN 978-9652294104
- Interview with Victor Kugler, Yad Vashem
- 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.
- Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold, Simon and Schuster 1988.
- Roses from the Earth: the Biography of Anne Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin 1999.
- Anne Frank: the Biography, Melissa Muller, foreword by Miep Gies, Bloomsbury 1999.
- The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Ernst Schnabel, Pan 1988.
- The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin 2002.
