Hannah Goslar, one of Anne Frank’s best friends, who like the famous girl from the “Diary” was detained in the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen during the Second World War, died on Friday 28 October at the age of 93 in Jerusalem. . The announcement of her disappearance was made today by the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam. Born in Berlin on 12 November 1928 to German Jewish parents, Hannah Goslar fled with her family from Germany in 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power, settling in Amsterdam: her father Hans Goslar had been Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Weimar Republic. In the Dutch city Hannah Goslar and Anne Frank, who lived on the same street and attended the same school, from day nursery, soon became best friends, as we read in the “Diary”. The two girls lost contact in July 1942 when the Frank family hid in the attic of their father Otto’s company to escape the Nazis. Goslar and her family were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and first deported to Westerbork concentration camp and in 1944 transferred to Bergen-Belsen. In the Nazi concentration camp Hannah (or Hanneli as she is called in the “Diary”) met her best friend again in February 1945, shortly before Anne Frank’s death at the age of 15. Hannah and her sister Gabi were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. In 1947 she emigrated to Jerusalem, where she, a nurse by profession, married the doctor Walter Pinchass Pick. The couple had three children, 11 grandchildren and more than 31 great-grandchildren: “This is my answer to Hitler,” said Hannah Goslar. Hanneli appeared in numerous documentaries and films on the life of Anne Frank and her story was told by the writer Alison Leslie Gold in the book “Hannah Goslar Remembers: A Childhood Friend of Anne Frank” (1999), translated into Italian by Rizzoli with the title “I remember Anne Frank”. Two films were taken from the book: “I remember Anna Frank” (2009) by Alberto Negrin, broadcast on Rai 1 in prime time on January 27, 2010, on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance, and “Anne Frank – My best friend” (2021) by Ben Sombogaart, which aired on Netflix in January 2022. Hannah Goslar said: “We lived close together and our first meeting was in 1934. We met in a grocery store. My mother and Anna’s mother, I remember, began. speaking German because neither of us knew Dutch. Anna was with her. The next day, when I saw her in kindergarten, I recognized her from the back and I ran to hug her. Since then, we became friends. At school, years later, Anna between lessons she wrote in a diary, which protected her from prying eyes. Everyone asked her what she wrote but the answer was the same for everyone: ‘it’s none of your business!’ She was a child like any other, normal. When I saw her in the concentration camp I felt contrite bystanders. I was happy to see her again but sad at the same time. I was hoping she was saved by escaping to Switzerland. Only after the war ended, did I learn of Anna’s death. I was still in hospital when I received a visit from Otto Frank. He was the one who told me that both of his daughters had not survived. “The American writer Alison Leslie Gold collected, over forty years after the end of the Second World War, the long testimony of Hannah Goslar. Hanneli recounts their first meeting in Amsterdam , after their families had abandoned Germany, daily life in the Dutch city, first loves, the beginning of the anti-Jewish laws, the German occupation, the disappearance of friends and relatives, until the sudden separation from Anna when all the Frank family decides to hide in the secret annex located behind the offices of their father’s company. Hanneli’s attempts to get in touch with Anna who she believes has fled to Switzerland will be useless, the disappointment of not having been informed by her friend. long void filled by the arrest and deportation of the whole Goslar family to Bergen Belsen. Remembering Anna Hanneli is happy that at least her friend is she is saved in Switzerland far from those horrors. Until she discovers that Anna is there, in Bergen Belsen, among the deportees without any privileges as instead, thanks to her father, former deputy minister of the Weimar Republic, fortunately happened to her. The meeting with her friend, through a very high-risk fence, is one of her most touching moments. Hanneli will try again to get close to Anna, at the risk of her life, but all the Dutch will be taken far away, to another shack and Hanneli will only know of Anna’s death after the war is over when Otto Frank will visit her in the hospital and tell her that his daughter did not survive. From that moment Otto Frank will become Hanneli’s adoptive father, she will follow her recovery and will be able to get her to Palestine where she can start a new life.
