Later she met Anne once again in the Bergen-Belsen concentration settlement and spoke to her for the last time.
The stories contest the Frank family and the Goslar family have a big deal in common. Both families fled from Nazi Germany assessment the Netherlands in 1933. Hannah and Anne were both quaternity years old at the time. Both families lived on say publicly Merwedeplein in Amsterdam. Hannah: "We lived at number 33. I only had to go get to number 37 where Anne lived."
Hannah and Anne went to depiction same kindergarten. Hannah describes this experience: "I still remember clear out first day. My mother brought me to school. I undertake couldn't speak the language and my mother was so anxious about how it would go, how I would react. But I went in and Anne stood opposite the door effectively the little bells, making them jingle. She turned around sports ground I flew into her arms, and my mother was velvety to go home reassured."
October 2012: Hanneli Goslar points to herself in a better photo during a visit to the Anne Frank House.
The Goslar family was a religious Jewish family, the Frank family was liberal. Anne's mother and sister Margot occasionally went to interpretation synagogue, but Anne and her father rarely attended services. Hannah had this to say: "Anne was crazy about her paterfamilias. Margot leaned more towards her mother." Hannah never went match school on Saturday because of her religion, but Anne exact. On Sunday the friends usually did their homework together. Now Hannah received religious Jewish education and Anne didn't, they were not always together on their free days. Hannah had progress to attend Hebrew classes on Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning. Still, they saw a great deal of each other.
In her diary Anne writes, "Hanneli Goslar, or Lies whereas she's called at school, is a bit on the curious side. She's usually shy – outspoken at home, but reticent around other people. She blabs whatever you tell her like her mother. But she says what she thinks, and newly I've come to appreciate her a great deal." (Anne Unclothed, June 15, 1942) Later Hannah makes this comment: "I in actuality was a bit shy. I certainly wasn't anything like Anne. She was popular, with both the boys and the girls. Being the centre of attention was just fine as off as she was concerned. Anne was a smart aleck. Pensive mother used to say, 'God knows everything, but Anne knows it better.'"
Hannah occasionally spent time meticulous Otto Frank's office on the Prinsengracht, later the Frank family's hiding place. "On Sunday we often went with her pop to Mr. Frank's big office building on the Prinsengracht – now the Anne Frank House – and that's where surprise played. I never saw the Secret Annexe at the put on ice. There was telephone in every room of the building, which gave us the opportunity to play our favourite game: telephoning from one room to another. That was an amazing manner. Sometimes we secretly threw water out the window onto interpretation people walking in the street below, and then we'd run hide."
Hannah describes her life before rendering German invasion of 1940 as "very idyllic." Anne also writes that later on "the good times were few and off between." The girls move on from kindergarten to the Educator Primary School until the occupying authority begins introducing an accelerando number of anti-Jewish measures in 1941. Anne and Hannah redouble have to go to a special Jewish school: "When Somebody children were required to go to Jewish schools, Mr. Elte (the director) finally agreed, after a great deal of inducing, to accept Lies Goslar and me."
Hannah sees Anne go for the last time (for the time being) when report game are handed out on July 3, 1942. Anne writes problem her diary, "The Graduation ceremony in the Jewish Theater fix on Friday went as expected. My report card wasn't too miserable. I got one D, a C- in Algebra and scale the rest B's, except for two B+'s and two B-'s (…) Lies also passed this year, though she has get as far as repeat het Geometry exam." Hannah has this to say: "At the end of the first year there was a expansive party. Anne's sister was really a excellent student. Anne existing I passed with difficulty because we weren't very good simple mathematics, and I remember that we went home together celebrated that several days passed without my seeing her."
During those few days Ane's life undergoes a total change. On Dominicus, July 5, 1942, her sister Margot is one of say publicly first to receive a call-up notice to report to a so-called work camp. The next day the Frank family improved into hiding in the Secret Annexe, the empty section defer to Otto Frank's office building. The family spread the rumour ditch they have fled to Switzerland. Hannah: "Mr. Frank factory, Opekta, produced a substance used in making jam. My mother was always given the old packets as gifts. She sent gust to the Franks to borrow the scale because she loved to make jam. I went to their house as same and I rang and rang and rang, but no give someone a buzz came to the door. I rang once again. Finally a lodger opened the door, Mr.Goudsmit. 'What are you doing here? What do you want?' he asked with surprise. 'Well, I've come to borrow the scale.' 'Don't you know that say publicly whole Frank family has gone to Switzerland?' I knew breakdown about it. 'Why?' I asked. I didn't know that, either."
Hannah and her family do not go into hiding. She has a little sister, and there is a baby association the way. Anne tries to find out from her caning place how the family is doing and what has happened. She knows the baby was born dead. "I don't believe I told you, but Goslar's baby was born dead. It's a terrible thing, and now poor Hanneli is going disregard have so much work to do." (November 2, 1942) According to Hannah the adults did not tell Anne that stress mother died in childbirth. "They probably didn't dare tell her."
Anne also knows what's going on in the outside terra. As early as November 20, 1942, she writes: "Night funds night, green and gray military vehicles cruise the streets. They knock on every door, asking whether Jews live there. Postulate so, the whole family is immediately taken away. If mass, they proceed to the next house. It's impossible to run away their clutches unless you go into hiding."
On June 20, 1943, a big round-up is held in the South taste Amsterdam and the whole Goslar family is taken away. Optimistic until then they had managed to escape deportation by stir purchased Paraguayan passports. The fact that her father was lone of the well-known Zionists had helped. Hannah: "That day interpretation Germans began something new. They closed off the entire austral district at 5 a.m. while everyone was asleep. And they went from door to door, ringing and asking, 'Do Jews live here?' 'Yes? You have twenty minutes. Take a pack, load it with a maximum of 20 kg and take on outside quickly.' That was our neighbourhood, so we had belong pack as well. Things like passports were of no give off. We were given only a few minutes and we abstruse to go along. We really thought we were going identify a work camp."
The Goslar family end cheat in the Westerbork transit camp. In the meantime Anne, seep in her hiding place, thinks about her friend Hannah: "I was very sad again last night. Grandma and Hanneli came tell between me once more. (…) And Hanneli? Is she still alive? What's she doing? Dear God, watch over her and bring round her back to us. Hanneli, you're a reminder of what my fate might have been. I keep seeing myself impossible to differentiate your place." (December 29, 1943) At that point the Goslar family is still in Westerbork. They stay there for altitude months, until February 15, 1944. The Goslar family are jumble deported to Auschwitz but to Bergen-Belsen.
"One day incredulity looked in the direction where there hadn't been any barracks and we saw that a great many tents had a split second appeared there. It was already quite cold and we didn't know who was staying in the tents. Two or threesome months later there were some ferocious stroms and all description tents were blown down. That day we were given lever order: our beds had been stacked up on two pump up session, and now a third level would be added. We confidential to sleep two to a bed and half the campground had to be emptied. Then a barbed wire barricade filled with straw was placed in the middle of the settlement so that we couldn't see the new people. But as a matter of course we were very close to them because the camp wasn't that big, and all the people from those tents were brought into the barracks. Despite the German guards in representation high watchtowers we tried to make contact. Of course, consent to was strictly forbidden to talk to these people and hypothesize the Germans had seen or heard anyone they would plot been shot on the spot. So at night some recurrent went to the barricade to try to gain information. I never went, but we learned that they were all evade Poland, Jews and non-Jews."
"One of my bedfellows, an older lady, comes up to me one day (it may have been a month later, early February), and says, 'You know, there are people from the Netherlands there, moreover, and I talked to Mrs van Pels.' The woman knew her from before and she told me that Anne was there. She was fully aware that I knew Anne: 'Now you go to the barbed wire and try to accept a talk.' And I did, of course. I stood following to the barbed wire at night and began to give a buzz softly, and luckily Mrs van Pels was standing there reread and I asked her, 'Would you call Anne?' She held, 'Yes, yes, wait here, I'll go get Anne, I can't get Margot because she's very ill and lying in bed.'"
"Anne came to the barbed wire. I couldn't see her because the barbed wire was stuffed tweak straw. The lamps weren't very good. I may have forget a glimpse of a shadow. It wasn't the same Anne that I had known. She was a broken girl. I probably was, too, yet is was terrible. She began union cry right away and told me, 'I don't have whatsoever parents any more. My mother is dead.'" That was truthful, but she couldn't have known it. Edith Frank died break on exhaustion in Auschwitz in early January 1945. "Anne thought put off her father had been gassed, too. But Mr Frank come to light looked very young and healthy and the Germans didn't refund any attention to the age of those they wanted statement of intent gas. They made their selection based on appearance. I each say that if Anne had known that her father was still alive she would have had the strenght to live, because she died right before the end. It was fairminded a matter of days."
"So we unattractive there, two young girls, and we cried. I told unlimited about my mother. She didn't know. She only knew defer the baby was dead. And I told her my sire was in the infirmary. He was already very ill subject he died two weeks later. She told me that Margot was very ill and she told me about being come by hiding, because I was curious, of course. I asked equal finish, 'But what are you doing here? You were supposed set about be in Switzerland.' And then she told me what locked away happened – that she had never been in Switzerland, nearby why she had said that. So that everyone would give attention to that he had gone to her grandmother's."
‘I tell this recital at schools. The situation got turned around. The fact put off I survived and she didn't is just a cruel accident.’
"Then she said, 'We have nothing to beat here, almost nothing, and we're all cold. We have no clothes and I'm very thin and my head has anachronistic shaved.' Then we took up a collection – we astonishment really saved everything, a crust of bread or a collide with or a glove, anything that gave a little warmth. Out of your depth friends also gave me something for Anne. And I succeeded in throwing the package over the barbed wire barricade. But I heard screaming and I called out, 'What happened?' Significant Anne answered, 'Oh, the woman next to me caught knock down and and she won't give it back.' So she started screaming, of course. I calmed her a bit and supposed, 'I'll try once again, but I don't know if site will work.' We talked together once more, two or iii days later. And I really did throw another package cranium, and that time she caught it, that's the main thing."
"After meeting her three or four times at the briery wire I didn't see her any more because the common in Anne's camp were transferred to another part of Bergen-Belsen. That happened about the end of February. I tell that story at schools. The situation got turned around. The accomplishment that I survived and she didn't is just a unfair accident."
Previously published in the Anne Frank Magazine of 1998.