The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

Review of The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy LindwerThe Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most important legacies of the Holocaust. It documents the experiences of a young Jewish girl, her family and their friends while hiding for years in concealed rooms behind a bookcase, called “the Secret Annex”, in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Anne Frank’s father, mother and sister moved into the Secret Annex in July 1942. Soon they were joined there by the Van Pels family and by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist. Their non-Jewish friends and employees, Victor Kugler, Johannes Keliman, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, provided them with food provisions as well as with information about current events, to reduce their anxiety and isolation. Although they could face the death penalty for harboring and aiding Jews, these courageous friends risked their lives to help those living in hiding.In her journal, Anne documents the daily difficulties of living in hiding as well as the family dynamics and challenges of becoming an adolescent in such difficult and dangerous circumstances. However, we know much less about what happened to Anne and her family once they were caught by the Dutch Nazis. On August 4, 1944, the Secret Annex was stormed by the Grune Polizei, led by the SS officer Karl Silberbauer.The Nazis had received a tip that Jews were living in hiding in that office building. The Jewish families were interrogated, then imprisoned in Weteringschans and sent to the punishment barracks for having lived in hiding. A few days later, the Frank family and their friends were transferred to Westerbrook, a transit camp for Dutch and German Jewish prisoners. Then, on September 3, 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz. The train journey to the concentration camp took three days. There the Franks encountered Anne and Margot’s friend from the Jewish Lyceum, Bloeme Evers-Emden, who was later interviewed about the Frank family by a Dutch filmmaker, Willy Lindwer, for the documentary which was also published as a book, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (Doubleday Publishing, New York, 1988).The book contains several interviews by eyewitnesses and friends who encountered the Frank family in Auschwitz as well as information about how people were transported to Auschwitz (in cattle trains, without food and water) and what happened to them once they got to the concentration camps. After the men were separated, upon arrival, from the women, Edith Frank and her daughters, Anne and Margot, were sent to Barrack 29. The Frank sisters spent almost two months at Auschwitz in the hospital after they contracted scabies. Their mother stayed there too to take care of them until Anne and Margot were sent to Bergen-Belsen, most likely on October 28, 1944. They were part of large groups of Jewish prisoners who were led on death marches to concentration camps within Germany, as the Russians were occupying Poland and approaching Auschwitz. Within a few months, in January, their mother, Edith Frank, died from sorrow and exhaustion. Their father, Otto Frank, survived the Holocaust and devoted the rest of his life to preserving his family’s legacy—as well as the memory of the Holocaust--by disseminating Anne’s diary.Although Bergen-Belsen was originally an exchange camp that had better conditions than the concentration and death camps, by 1944 it became overcrowded and disease-ridden as the Germans forced more and more prisoners into it. Lindwer states that the conditions became so bad in the camp during the final months of the war that “although there were no gas chambers, ten thousand people died… There was almost nothing to eat, it was winter, and sickness and disease were everywhere… As a result, in the last months before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and in the first weeks thereafter, most of the inmates perished. Among them were Margot and Anne Frank, who died of typhus within days of each other. The camp was liberated by the British shortly thereafter, on April 15, 1945” (6-7). We still don’t know for sure when the Frank sisters perished. Although Lindwer’s book states that they died in March, the Anne Frank Foundation recently published an article that indicates that they probably died earlier, in February 1945. In a genocide in which the death of an individual counted for nothing; in which millions of people were shot and buried in mass graves or incinerated anonymously in concentration camps, Anne Frank’s diary--as well as books like Lindwer’s—continue to remind us that each life was important and that each death in the Holocaust is worth commemorating.Claudia Moscovici, Holocaust Memory

tragic story to say the least. the family moves out of Germany due to Hitler invading plans to deport and kill all non German woman and children and anyone under 15 yrs, the elderly, and starve and try to work the rest to death. Otto, Ann's dad and family move to Holland to escape Hitler's maniacal plans but gets information that Holland is next to be invaded but Otto decides this time not to move his family away to safety but instead hide in a secret annex behind a sliding bookcase. Ann especially keeps hope alive even though impending capture is imminent, this is displayed in her writings as well of love for others especially her dad. you must realize 1.5 million other children were murdered, but its Ann's diary that makes this story special. this precious, intelligent sweet heart keeping faith up to the 2 yrs.' before capture. and then sent to concentration camps to be starved and frozen, her body covered in lice and fleas and festering sores from typhus and other maladies. one witness describing her skeletal appearance as a ` freezing baby bird'. Her condition so bad she dies days before the camp was liberated. Is there a God?

The stories told by several women were truly eye opening about life in several of the camps. Each woman had, at some point, engaged with Anne Frank, her sister and her mother. They discussed how they managed to survive daily, with rarely any food. And little to drink. Each was strong in their own way, and together, many survived the horrors. It was sad that the Frank women did not survive until the end of the war. My heart aches for everyone in those camps. How anyone could treat people so horribly is beyond description.

Such a heartbreak. Only consolation was that she had her Mom and Margot with her for much of the hell on earth she endured. I bet their relationship matured and their love grew exponentially.

Very well written. I read it from cover to cover in no time at all. I couldn't put it down until I finished it. Then when I got to the last page I was disappointed that there wasn't a hundred more pages to read. I do hate when you finish a good book.

"The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" is only periphally a book about Anne - but it is pointedly a book about Anne's experience in those last months of her life. With the exception of her close friend Hannah Goslar, who talks about her at length, Anne is mentioned only in passing by the other interviewees, all of whom were acquainted with her. But their individual stories of what they endured in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen is also her story, and illuminates her time in the camps as she herself would have - but never got the chance to. A good addition to a library of Anne Frank material, or an excellent compendium of personal experiences during the Holocaust, whichever way is more valuable to the reader.

THESE WOMEN TELL NOT ONLY THEIR STORIES OF THEIR LIVES, BUT THEIR SURVIVAL OF THE HOLOCAUST: OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS THEY WERE IN, SPECIFICALLY: WESTERBORK, A TRANSIT CAMP; AUSCHWITZ -BIRKENAU, the extermination camp; BERGEN-BELSEN, A CONCENTRATION CAMP; & LABAU, A WORK CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS. THEY ALSO TELL THEIR STORIES OF THE FRANK FAMILY MEMBERS, NOT JUST ANNE FRANK, BUT ALSO ABOUT MARGOT, EDITH, AND OTTO FRANK. THIS IS THE MOST DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT THE LAST SEVEN MONTHS OF ANNE'S, MARGOT'S, AND EDITH'S LIVES. This book was in conjunction with a documentary film of the same name that was shown to the public on PBS in 1987 on the 60th anniversary of ANNE FRANK'S BIRTH. YOU SHOULD READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY FILM OF THE SAME TITLE: "THE LAST 7 MONTHS OF ANNE FRANK".

This is the latest of many first-hand accounts I have read describing the horrors people endured in the concentration camps of WW11 - including those run by the Japanese. This particular book is about six Dutch women who for various reasons ended up in Auschwitz/Bergen-Belsen towards the final months of the war and their incredible will to survive in the most horrific circumstances. As with all the books about this subject, it is difficult to understand man's inhumanity to man. The author suggests they were 'treated like animals' - I disagree, most animals are fed and watered regularly and have somewhere dry and warm to shelter, but sadly, even those basic needs were not met in the case of the millions of human beings that were in these camps throughout the war.My criticism with this particular book is the title. There was very little contact between these women and the Frank sisters at this time due to where they were situated, so I do feel that it would have been more honest to give this book a title that reflects the stories of these six remarkable women, rather than stating that it's about Anne Frank's final months - it clearly isn't. In fact all we know after Anne, her sister Margot and their mother Edith were captured is where they were sent and that like all the other unfortunate victims, suffered horribly and died from starvation and illness, so this book reveals nothing that the world doesn't already know. That aside, these six women told of their dreadful, horrific experiences which must have been extremely difficult to do. I believe that every single child in the world who attends school should read about what happened, it should never be forgotten.

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.

This book follows six Dutch women's experiences through their harrowing experiences before during and after their time in the German concentration camp system. They all met Anne Frank, some knew her before the war. We all know how this ends for Anne and so it is a very sad book. For the six women themselves they all survived (obviously) and this book tells their stories.

This book is ghastly and wonderful at the same time. You read what these women went through and you can't believe how they coped and are coping still. What is amazing is the support that they gave and received from each other whilst in the concentration camps. This is a book that will open your eyes to the atrosities of the World War 2 concentration camps and it will show you how the smallest acts of kindness save lives.

Excellent but more of a story of her friends than her.