Book Review: My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds by Hannah Pick-Goslar *****

My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds by Hannah Pick-Goslar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

On November 27, 1943, Anne Frank wrote of a waking nightmare featuring her friend Hannah (called Lies in the diary) in desperate straits. At the time, Hannah was at the transit camp of Westerbork, believing that the Frank family was safe in Switzerland. They would come into contact one more time at Belsen, shortly before Anne’s death of typhus only two weeks before the liberation of the camp. In My Friend Anne Frank, written with the assistance of Tel Aviv journalist Dina Kraft and completed after her death at 93, Hannah Pick-Goslar tells of their friendship and of her and her own family’s experiences during the war and afterward.

Originally thrown together as a result of their parents’ common background as German Jewish refugees in Amsterdam, Anne and Hannah quickly became firm friends despite the difference in their temperaments (Anne was outgoing, while Hannah was more shy and introverted) and the levels of their families’ religious observance. Together they lived through the German invasion of the Netherlands and the ever-tightening restrictions on Jews until the disappearance of the Franks into hiding, after which Hannah narrates her own experiences, including her final encounter with Anne, her reunion with other survivors including Otto Frank, and her subsequent immigration to Israel, where she became a children’s nurse and lived until her death in 2022.

Despite the title, My Friend Anne Frank, while it complements and adds context to Anne’s diary, is the story of a woman who was every bit as extraordinary in her own way, not least in her tireless efforts to keep the memory of the Holocaust, as well as that of her friend, alive.

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