Anne Frank’s Childhood Friend Recalls Their Lives Before the War

Fast friends

The girls’ lives weren’t always so tragic, however, and that is what Hannah recounts in her book My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds. Like the Franks, Hannah’s family had also moved to the Netherlands after fleeing Germany in the early 1930s. The girls first met while grocery shopping with their mothers at a local store. It was at school that they became friends.

Anne Frank sitting at a desk at the 6th Montessori School which her and Hannah attended together, 1940. (Photo Credit: Unknown Author / Collectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

Hannah remembers how scared she was to start school, but her mother made her go anyway. When she arrived, she spotted a familiar face, the girl she met at the grocery store earlier. What clicked most for the young Anne and Hannah was that they could speak German with each other instead of Dutch, of which they knew little. Hannah said, “We instantly rushed into each other’s arms like long-separated sisters, sentences in German flowing between us like a volcano of connection.”

Next-door neighbors

Not only did the girls attend the same school, but they were also neighbors. According to Hannah, “It took me less than a minute to swoop from my apartment and race up to Anne’s, which was a floor above ours.” They would walk to school together, study together, and play together. They even learned Dutch together, something that they quickly picked up once they put their minds to it. In an interview, Hannah remembered her friend as a “very spicy little girl,” who wasn’t particularly obedient.

Hannah Pick-Goslar visits the just opened permanent exhibition “Anne Frank Here & Now” at the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, November 3, 2006. (Photo Credit: Michael Kappeler / DDP / AFP / Getty Images)

The other children in their neighborhood soon joined them in games of hide and seek in the square, riding scooters, and playing hopscotch. While they lived in their “contained, protected world,”  the Nuremberg Laws were implemented, allowing and encouraging discrimination against Jewish people, like Anna and Hannah. This caused an influx of more German Jewish immigrants to the Netherlands, although Hannah recalled they weren’t received as warmly as she and her family had been.

The German invasion

Despite growing anti-semitism, Hannah’s family and the Franks still continued to follow their faith. She recalled in her book that their two families regularly held Shabbat dinners together with the girls sitting together at the table. Sadly this joy was short-lived, as Germany soon went to war, and invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. Although the girls returned to school together, both of their families tried to find a way out of the country, fearing for their safety.

Hannah Goslar-Pick (right) and her granddaughter Tamar Meir (left) water a sapling from the chestnut tree that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary, March 26, 2012. (Photo Credit: Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty Images)

Things got worse in the city, but Anne and Hannah still managed to do some ‘normal’ childhood things. One memory that Hannah had was Anne’s 13th birthday. Otto Frank rented a projector so that all the children could watch Rin Tin Tin, after which they played games, and ate various baked goods. The gift that Hannah remembers best was the diary Anne received, one that she had wanted for quite some time.

Gone to ‘Switzerland’

On July 6, Hannah was sent to borrow a scale from the Franks so her mother could make jam. When she arrived at their apartment, however, the bell was answered by the man who boarded there. He told Hannah that the Franks weren’t there as they had gone to Switzerland. After gathering her thoughts later, she went back to the house and was allowed to walk around it one last time. She recalled Anne leaving many of her important things, like her cat Moortje, behind, something that struck Hannah as strange.

Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, shows Queen Juliana of The Netherlands the Secret Annex, June 12, 1979. (Photo Credit: Bettmann / Getty Images)

The one thing she looked for but couldn’t find was Anne’s diary – she wanted to read the notes Anne had compiled on each of their classmates – but it was nowhere to be found. Hannah wrote of her leaving the house, “I looked at her and [sister] Margot’s room one more wistful time, saying a silent goodbye and prayer for safe travels.”

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She was suspicious that her friend was really in Switzerland, but had no idea she was in hiding with her family. The next time they would see each other was at Bergen-Belsen.

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