Van Maarsen had been certain Anne and her family were in Switzerland, based on a rumor the Franks themselves had started before going into hiding to cover their tracks. Otto knew already that his wife had perished at Auschwitz, van Maarsen recalls, and soon found out that his two daughters, Anne and Margot, had died at Bergen-Belsen.
And I didn't like that. I didn't want to remember these bad times, it was so sad," says van Maarsen, who was just 16 at the time. It was very difficult for me," she adds. She was finally able to read the promised but never sent goodbye letter that Anne had written to her and copied into her diary. After Otto learned of Anne's death, he began reading her diary, which two of their helpers in hiding, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, had gathered and put in a drawer after Anne and the others were arrested on August 4, And I thought, 'Who can be interested in this writings of a young girl and about the war,' nobody wanted to think about the war anymore," van Maarsen says.
Indeed, on June 25, —just over 68 years ago and a couple weeks after what would have been Anne's 18th birthday—the first version of Anne Frank's diary was published in Dutch. Translations in German and French followed in , and an English translation was published in the United States in , with a preface by Eleanor Roosevelt. The diary has been translated into 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. For many years, van Maarsen preferred the anonymity of the pseudonym Anne had assigned her in the diary, Jopie.
She remained quiet about her identity as Anne's best friend, "but at a certain moment I felt So I started to write about it. I knew that it would start but I thought I have to do this because Anne would have been furious if she had known, that she would be misused.
For the last several years, she has been writing books , traveling to speak—particularly with students and young people—about Anne and the Holocaust, and giving interviews to the media.
Van Maarsen, her fluent English burdened slightly that Friday in May by fatigue from a busy schedule and lingering jetlag, explained that the frequent travel and list of commitments is worth it if she can reach a younger generation and help them grasp the often unfathomable events of the Holocaust.
Nowadays, that work often takes her to Germany. In the Netherlands, she says, the Jewish community is not particularly interested in Anne Frank. A new passion was born: writing. After a couple of years she decided to publish her memoires once again, this time in two volumes with the accent in each instance on discrimination and racism.
The many translations that followed led to a new round of promotional trips, lecture invitations and interviews on radio and television.
School visits were also a regular feature of her programme. Jacqueline's talks for schoolchildren were so satisfying, especially in Germany, that she decided to follow advice and rework her book for children. Je beste vriendin Anne - Your Best Friend Anne was published in and in awarded the Zilveren Griffel - a literary prize for books for young people. Although Anne was her best friend, she kept quiet for a long time about their friendship. On 6 July , Anne disappeared, as did her diary, in which Jacqueline features as Jopie.
Although Anne continued to write letters and dedicate poems to her friend while in hiding from the Germans, these never reached Jacqueline. As far as she knew, the Frank family had left for Switzerland. Meanwhile she, the daughter of a French Catholic mother and a Dutch Jewish father, was leading the life of a Jewish girl with all the problems that entailed. The family was saved in the nick of time and came through the war unscathed.
Although Jacqueline van Maarsen shuns the limelight and is anxious not to jump on the Anne Frank bandwagon, she has now decided to write about her relationship with Anne — in her words, to do justice to the girl in Anne Frank and put her veneration in perspective.
My name is Anne, she said, Anne Frank has, however, become more: a moving family chronicle, recorded with a sharp eye for detail.
A family marked by the problems of a double identity.
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