Willy Lindwer

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When I went to the library to pick up the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, I also picked up this book. I wanted to learn more about her last months, as Anne didn’t write in her diary after she was found and brought to the camps.

If you, just like me, are looking for books to help you find this info, please skip this one.

The title is completely misleading, as Anne Frank is barely mentioned in the book, and these women that claim to know her seem to not have known her at all. If I see a person on the far end of the fence, or sit together while the guards are counting us, I wouldn’t consider them a friend. Just a fellow unfortunate companion.

Don’t get me wrong – these six women, that went through all this traumatized period, and are brave enough to tell the story are worth mentioning, and are worth of great recognitions. And this book is also a great value to history of what happened in those cruel places.

But when people use a famous person’s name in order to sell a book, on such painful basis, this is beyond me to comment, so I will leave it to you to make a conclusion on your own.

Among this part, the stories of these six women were heartbreaking, and so well-described, it felt as if I was there for a moment. The things they went through and the families they lost is so sad.
I also liked the old images that were in the middle of the book. They added a real image to the words.

If you want to read more about Anne Frank – choose another book. But if you want to find out about other people’s stories from this time period – grab this book.

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Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest



When I went to the library to pick up the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, I also picked up this book. I wanted to learn more about her last months, as Anne didn’t write in her diary after she was found and brought to the camps.

If you, just like me, are looking for books to help you find this info, please skip this one.

The title is completely misleading, as Anne Frank is barely mentioned in the book, and these women that claim to know her seem to not have known her at all. If I see a person on the far end of the fence, or sit together while the guards are counting us, I wouldn’t consider them a friend. Just a fellow unfortunate companion.

Don’t get me wrong – these six women, that went through all this traumatized period, and are brave enough to tell the story are worth mentioning, and are worth of great recognitions. And this book is also a great value to history of what happened in those cruel places.

But when people use a famous person’s name in order to sell a book, on such painful basis, this is beyond me to comment, so I will leave it to you to make a conclusion on your own.

Among this part, the stories of these six women were heartbreaking, and so well-described, it felt as if I was there for a moment. The things they went through and the families they lost is so sad.
I also liked the old images that were in the middle of the book. They added a real image to the words.

If you want to read more about Anne Frank – choose another book. But if you want to find out about other people’s stories from this time period – grab this book.

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

… (more)

This is six women's stories about their time in Auschwitz and Westerbork. Each of the women knew the Frank family before and had one or more interactions with Anne, Margot and Mrs. Frank while in the concentration camps. It is so interesting to hear snippets of what happened after the diary ends. Each of the stories the women tell are of course heart wrenching, but they also bring Anne a bit more to life. It is so nice to know these women survived and could lead a somewhat normal life. It is also such a tribute to those who did not make it. Though we can never know what these women suffered, it is an interesting peek into Anne's last days, told through their stories.… (more)

This book, first published in the Netherlands in 1988, contains the accounts of six Dutch women who encountered Anne Frank during her time in Westerbork, Auschwitz-Birkenau or in Bergen-Belsen. Only one of them, Hannah Pick-Goslar, knew Anne beforehand and is mentioned in her diary. The rest had chance encounters with Anne and other members of her family, some of them very fleeting, so despite the common factor that brings these moving and tragic accounts together, the title is somewhat of a misnomer. A number of these women were members of the Dutch resistance and/or hid Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution before being betrayed or discovered and sent to the camps, several of them around the same time as Anne's family was betrayed in the summer of 1944. Some of the accounts also contain strong analysis of the Nazi attempt to dehumanise Jews and others and how the writer was able to fight back by maintaining their moral courage and self-belief, and that of their close companions, or by disengaging mentally from the horrors around them and living in their minds. The accounts thereby provide a strong testimony to the strength of the human spirit in adversity. In the week of reading this, I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and the later accounts have been given added poignancy as I have been able to visualise the surroundings described there.… (more)