Overview

Jacqueline van Maarsen's father was Dutch, her mother French; he was Jewish, she a Catholic. In 1938, after unremitting effort, he succeeded in registering his wife with the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. From that moment on, his two daughters were also considered to be Jews. Jacqueline was forced to go to a special school for Jewish children - it was there that she met Anne Frank and they immediately became friends. Unlike Anne Frank, Jacqueline van Maarsen escaped deportation thanks to her strong-willed mother who persuaded the German Registration Bureau to undo her listing as a Jew. She left the school a few months after Anne Frank went into hiding (or 'went to Switzerland', as Jacqueline believed). It was only after the war when Otto Frank, Anne's father, told her what had happened that she found out the truth about her best friend's fate.

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9781905147557

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"'Anne Frank described her as her best friend in her famous diary. Now 78, the former bookbinder Jacqueline van Maarsen recalls being a teenager in Holland during German occupation, and how her cherished friendship with Anne came to an abrupt and tragic end.' - Sunday Times'For years after Anne Frank's diary was published, the identity of her ""best friend"" was secret. Then van Maarsen owned up. Now she has written about the Anne she knew' - Sunday Telegraph'Van Maarsen gave a moving first-hand account of her friendship with Anne Frank whose life and death has become emblematic of the horrors of Nazism' - The Times"

'Anne Frank described her as her best friend in her famous diary. Now 78, the former bookbinder Jacqueline van Maarsen recalls being a teenager in Holland during German occupation, and how her cherished friendship with Anne came to an abrupt and tragic end.' - Sunday Times'For years after Anne Frank's diary was published, the identity of her best friend was secret. Then van Maarsen owned up. Now she has written about the Anne she knew' - Sunday Telegraph'Van Maarsen gave a moving first-hand account of her friendship with Anne Frank whose life and death has become emblematic of the horrors of Nazism' - The Times

Author Information

Jacqueline van Maarsen was born in 1929 in Amsterdam, where she still lives today. Anne Frank's best friend survived the war when her Catholic-born mother, a convert to Judaism, convinced the Nazis that she and her family were falsely registered as Jews. Van Maarsen saved Anne's letters sent from her hiding place in the attic of an Amsterdam spice firm owned by her father.Since 1986 she has been lecturing on Anne Frank, and on discrimination, in schools all over the world.She is the author of Anne Frank's Heritage to be published by Arcadia Books in 2008.

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