Anne Frank remained storyteller at Nazi camp

[IndianaGreen]

Anne Frank remained storyteller at Nazi camp

Holocaust survivor Berthe Meijer, 71, offers rare glimpse of Jewish teenager in final weeks of her life in Bergen Belsen, struggling to keep up her own spirits even as she tried to lift morale of smaller children with fairy tales

Associated Press Published: 03.20.10, 08:22 / Israel Jewish Scene

Frail, bone-cold and surrounded by death, Jewish teenager Anne Frank did her best to distract younger children from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by telling them fairy tales, a Holocaust survivor says.

The account by Berthe Meijer, now 71, of being a seven-year-old inmate of Bergen Belsen offers a rare glimpse of Anne in the final weeks of her life in the German camp, struggling to keep up her own spirits even as she tried to lift the morale of the smaller children.

That Anne had a gift for storytelling was evident from the diary she kept during two years in hiding with her family in Amsterdam. The scattered pages were collected and published after the war in what became the most widely read book to emerge from the Holocaust.

But Meijer's memoir, being published in Dutch later this month, is the first to mention Anne's talent for spinning tales even in the despair of the camp.

The memoir deals with Meijer's acquaintance with Anne Frank in only a few pages, but she said she titled it "Life After Anne Frank" because it continues the tale of Holocaust victims where the famous diary leaves off.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3864296,00.html

Imagine how much richer our world would have been if there hadn't been a Holocaust.

[Skittles]

1. .

:cry:

[Brickbat]

2. This woman was seven when she was at Bergen-Belsen.

She describes how the simple act of cleaning sauce from a pan with her finger can trigger the ambiguously pleasant memory of being allowed to lick one of the camp's enormous cooking vats.

[Goblinmonger]

3. Lucky enough to visit the Anne Frank House this summer.

Unbelievably moving. Re-read the book before we left for the trip. If you ever get to Amsterdam, make this a must see.

[kevinbgoode]

4. Several years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the house

..well, the place where the Frank family lived - it was shockingly small, but you left that tour feeling moved.

It's interesting that you posted this tonight. . .I just watched the film "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". . .it was an amazing story from a child's viewpoint on the other side of the holocaust. While it is fictional, it left me shaken . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkzIC_bwxT8

Here is the trailer link if you haven't seen it. . .

[IndianaGreen]

6. I liked the film, even though it defied credulity at times

I saw on cable late last year. The ending is quite something!

[Iris]

5. God, what a loss.

Imagine what she could have been.

[IndianaGreen]

7. A Dutch J.K. Rowling, perhaps.

Multiply what happened to the Franks by 6 million, and the enormity of this tragedy really sinks in.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. About 10 or 15 years ago there was a TV miniseries about Anne Frank

that covered a bit of the time before the family went into hiding and told what happened to Anne and her sister in Bergen-Belsen, based on accounts of people who knew them. It also told of their father's attempt to find out what happened to his family.

Very well done, and it had more depth than the Hollywood movie.

It's interesting: Hollywood does not portray the Holocaust until 1959, when the movie of The Diary of Anne Frank came out, and then in quick succession you get Judgment at Nuremberg, Exodus, and The Counterfeit Traitor. It's as if people had to put some distance between themselves and the actual events before they could portray them on the screen.