Relatives and friends of Anne Frank recall the girl, and the icon
NEW YORK — Eva Schloss, a playmate of Anne Frank’s in Amsterdam whose mother later married Anne’s father, recalls an 11-year-old who hopscotched, shot marbles, gossiped and talked so much her friends nicknamed her “Miss Quack Quack.”
Anne also had an intense interest in clothing, boys and Hollywood stars like Deanna Durbin.
“When I told her I had an older brother, she said, ‘Oooh. I must come to your apartment and meet him.’ ”
Anne was a lively girl who could be something of “a busybody,” Monica Smith said about her young second cousin — and she often had ink stains on her slender fingers.
“She was a writer,” said Smith, who also remembered that Anne had a generous streak: “She would bring me peanuts. We were not choosy in those days.”
The memories, unremarkable as they may seem, are about a girl whose diary and death from typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at 15 have made her perhaps the Holocaust’s foremost symbol of slaughtered innocence. People are fascinated or moved by the slimmest morsel of information about her. When watershed Holocaust dates come up on the calendar, like the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom in Germany and Austria on Nov. 9-10 in 1938, Anne’s surviving relatives and friends are invited to share tidbits as well as tell their own often harrowing stories.
Survivors who knew Anne retain the sacred mystique of ancient scrolls — touchstones to someone whose story helped cheat Hitler of his delusion of erasing Jews from the world’s collective conscience. And organizations appreciate these relatives not just because they give life to statistics like the 6 million Jews killed but because the stories underscore their missions and serve as a draw for raising funds.
MEANINGFUL TO PEOPLE
“She’s such an important figure for so many that having someone connected to her — even if it’s a distant connection — is exciting and meaningful to people,” said David Marwell, director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage and an expert on Nazi crimes. “The diary has been read by so many people, and they get connected with this powerful kind of icon. It would be easy for one’s cynicism to creep in, but I don’t think so.”
A first cousin, Buddy Elias, Anne’s closest living relative and the head of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, Switzerland, lectures weekly in Europe, and will speak at Kristallnacht observances in Frankfurt, Germany.
A half-dozen friends like Jacqueline van Maarsen, who has written books on her relationship with Anne, also speak often, though in an interview van Maarsen said it was difficult for her to explain the attention Anne continues to attract.
“For me she was just a little friend, a very nice girl, and suddenly the whole world knows her,” she said.
It is not unusual for the slender Frank house on an Amsterdam canal to draw 4,000 visitors a day. Last year, the house drew 1.2 million visitors. Meanwhile, the diary has sold more than 35 million copies in 65 languages. The Anne Frank Center in Manhattan, an affiliate of the Amsterdam house, sponsors a traveling exhibition that was seen by 120,000 people across the United States last year.
“People can recognize things in her life story in their own life story,” said Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the house.
The personal stories relatives and friends tell are compelling, and not just when they intersect with Anne’s.
Monica Smith was born Dorothee Wurzburger in Stuttgart on May 10, 1923, six years before Anne, who was raised in Frankfurt. Smith first saw Anne as a child of 3 when both went to visit grandparents in Aachen. Smith’s grandmother and Anne’s grandfather were siblings, and their mothers were first cousins.
The memories grow clearer after Kristallnacht. Smith’s parents put her on the Kindertransport to Holland that rescued 2,000 German-Jewish children, though one-third did not survive the Nazi occupation. Smith, who was about 15, spent weeks quarantined in a barracks sleeping on a mattress on the floor, was taken to a more rural camp, and then to the Burgerweeshuis, an orphanage housing 75 refugee children.
REVISITING THE PAST
Anne and her father, by then living in Amsterdam, visited the orphanage a dozen times, sometimes bringing treats. Smith also saw Anne’s older sister, Margot, who was “totally different” — quiet and demure.
Schloss, 85, is an elegant, articulate woman who worked as a photographer, ran an antiques shop, raised three daughters and wrote a 1988 book, Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank. She was born Eva Geiringer in Vienna on May 11, 1929, a month before Anne. Hers was an assimilated family that owned a shoe factory. In school, children were separated for religious classes. “Everybody knew who was a Jew,” she said. “So after the Nazis came, we were immediately attacked and beaten up and the teachers were watching it and not doing anything.”
Otto Frank, knowing his wife had died, was also liberated at Auschwitz and returned to Amsterdam to await news about his daughters. Schloss’ mother and Otto became friends and eventually lovers.