The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

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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 show more 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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Six Jewish women who survived the hell of the Nazi horrors of the Holocaust tell their stories, and those of the last 7 months of Anne Frank's life. The pain, humiliation and dehumanization is told of Auschwitz. With detailed eyewitness accounts, these women once more live the hell of the trip from the Dutch Westerbork transit camp to the last cattle car train ride. By the time they arrived at Auschwitz, they were emaciated beyond recognition, clad in rags and made to stand for 3 days prior to their arrival at the death camp. This devastating reconstruction of the ordeal Anne Frank endured in the last 7 months of her short life is a necessary complement to her own diar. I found the brave women's reconstruction of their harrowing ordeal show more to be something I will never forget. When I find myself complaining about some menial thing in my life, this will be a reminder of what I escaped just by being in another time, another place and another belief system.
This should be a must read for every American citizen to show that tolerance can not be allowed as to who is better than another, whose belief system is the best, or whose race is allowed to continue, while killing off others. The HORROR OF THE HOLOCAUST is something everybody should remember when encountering another person.
I had nightmares the night I read this, and as my husband held me as I cried out, I was thankful for my own security, safety and acceptance without being killed for just being someone different. This book should be on everybody's bookshelf, as a reminder of evil and intolerance. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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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, show more 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 show less

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.

Un'ennesima e preziosa raccolta di testimonianze sull'Olocausto.
Il fil rouge che lega questi racconti è che tutte le donne intervistate hanno incrociato il loro cammino con Anna Frank nell'inferno della deportazione, sia pure per brevi momenti, restituendoci un'immagine più umana e meno letteraria della figura simbolo della Shoah. In qualche modo qui c'è il vero finale del diario, brutale e terribile.
Nessuna di esse ha conosciuto intimamente Anna e non sapremo mai cosa davvero abbia provato in quei momenti, ma ciascuna delle loro storie viaggia su binari paralleli ed è facile pensare che anche per Anna (olandese come loro, deportata con lo stesso trasporto e negli stessi campi) le privazioni e le angosce siano state simili.
Questo show more libro a differenza di altri sull'argomento (Se questo è un uomo e La notte su tutti) ha valore esclusivamente cronachistico, è la trascrizione a stampa di un documentario televisivo olandese degli anni '80. Ciò non rende meno toccanti le esperienze di queste sopravvissute o meno importante la loro condivisione affinché certi orrori non si ripetano, rende però molto difficile valutare il testo con spirito critico. Mi limito a dire che qualunque resoconto sull'Olocausto fatto da chi lo ha vissuto sulla propria pelle vale la pena di essere conosciuto. show less