Hanneli Pick-Goslar was a childhood friend of Anne Frank.
Sixty-seven years ago, she was a fellow inmate of Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen.
Last week, Pick-Goslar was a guest of honor at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
The site — a museum since 1960 at the house on Prinsengracht Street where the author of the world-famous diary, her family and other endangered Jews found refuge for three years in the 1940s — is now a museum. The annex where the Jews hid until turned in to the Gestapo by a Dutch collaborator is now open to the public, sans furniture.
Last week, the museum opened a new exhibit. “So now I’m fifteen” features photos, letters and books from each year of Anne’s short life.
On June 13, 1944, Anne wrote in her diary, “Another birthday has gone by. So I’m now fifteen.”
Shortly afterwards, she and the rest of the annex’s residents were arrested. She died in Bergen-Belsen of typhoid in March 1945, a few months before the concentration camp was liberated.
Pick-Goslar, 83, right, with her daughter Ruth got a first look at the new exhibit, some artifacts of which were recently acquired and are being shown for the first time. Among them are a tea set, and the books “Basic Principles of Botany”
and “Dutch Sagas and Myths,” in which Anne penned the words “a memento of Anne Frank.”
Other artifacts include a photo of 10-year-old Anne walking arm-in-arm with then-Hanneli Goslar, a photo of Anne on her father’s lap, and a letter in which she wrote, “You can and may regard me as fourteen, but with all the trouble I’ve become older.”
The exhibit’s opening coincided with the 57th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of the play, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
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