Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  Margot is sitting beside her at the table, a young schoolgirl with a yellow Judenstern sewn neatly to the breast of her sweater. Resting her cheek against her hand, she observes Anne from behind the lenses of her glasses with half a smile. Anne gazes back at her. She realizes just how young Margot still is. Just a teenager, never to be any older.

  Do you feel unburdened?

  “Unburdened?” Anne considers this. “Bep made her confession. I made mine. But I doubt I will ever feel unburdened.”

  But she could be right, you know. Bep. Belsen was so hellish, Anne. We were both so sick. We were both so weak. I fell from the pallet. Maybe it wasn’t your fault at all.

  A shrug. Who knows? Who will ever really know? “There are times when I feel so lonely, Margot. So separate from the rest of the world. As if I don’t actually exist. As if I’m just a shadow,” she says. “Like you.” Exhaling smoke, she watches Margot dissolve quietly in its cloud.

  The telephone gives a chilly ring, and she crosses the room to snap the receiver off the wall. On the other end, she hears the voice of an old man. “Er is er een jarig, hoera-hoera. Dat kun je wel zien dat is zij!” An old man’s happily croaking birthday song. “Zij leve lang, hoera-hoera, zij leve la-ang hoera!”

  “Hello, Pim,” she says. “You know it’s actually tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yes, I know that.” He speaks to her now in English. “Of course I know. But waiting for another day was too much. Hadas said I must wait, but I thought, ‘No. I must sing my daughter her birthday song right this moment.’”

  “Pim,” Anne says. “Pim, you’ll never guess who appeared today.”

  “Who appeared?” he asks, as if perhaps his daughter is describing a magic trick.

  “Bep,” Anne says, swallowing quietly.

  “Bep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our Bep?”

  “Yes. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. Just as planned when we were in hiding. Do you remember?”

  “Of course. Of course I remember,” he says, though a slight vacancy in his tone makes her doubt that he really does.

  “And what did Bep have to say for herself?” Pim wants to know.

  Anne pauses. The smile that has half formed on her lips stiffens.

  “Anne, are you still there?”

  “Yes. Yes, Pim. She said she’s lived here in America for years. She said her husband owns a hardware store. And she has two children.”

  “Well,” Pim replies with a satisfied tone. “That is wonderful. Wonderful to know. I am so very glad to hear that she is happy.”

  Anne’s eyes have gone damp with tears. She starts to speak, but as it happens, all she can speak is silence.

  “Anne?”

  “Pim. This call. It must be costing a fortune. I should let you go before you have to take out a bank loan.”

  “Take out what?”

  “Nothing. Nothing, Pim. I should let you go. I mean, I should say good-bye.”

  “Happy birthday, meisje,” he tells her. “I think of you daily.”

  “Me, too, Pim,” she says. “Me, too.”

  And sets the phone’s receiver back on its hook.

  * * *

  • • •

  In the bedroom she has changed into her kimono and sits in front of the vanity mirror, gazing deeply into the shadowed eyes contained in the circle of glass.

  When she peels off the Band-Aid strip, her secret number is revealed. She brushes the spot with her finger. A-25063. The ink has faded to a tender shade of violet.

  One beautiful thing.

  Draping the pale combing shawl over her shoulders, she straightens the fringe hanging from its edges and picks up her brush from among the scattered lipsticks, eyeliners, and bits of crumpled Kleenex smudged with eye shadow. Combing her fingers through her dark curtain of hair, she applies the brush, stroke after stroke after stroke. The long ritual. And then, for a moment, she pauses. Leans forward toward the face in the glass.

  Could it all be nothing but a vivid flash? Her life, she wonders. Could it be no more than a blink in the hectic desire of a dying girl’s thoughts? A moment’s hesitation before the angel of death collected her into his bundle of sticks? This life, now contained in the circumference of a vanity’s mirror, is it real? Can it be real? A life for a girl who should have had no life beyond the mudflats of Bergen-Belsen. If she blinks, will she feel her last breath constricting her body? She cannot help but test it.

  A blink.

  And yet she breathes.

  If it is all a dream, then she is dreaming a life that did not end. A life that demands the purpose that is coloring her gaze. Why does she have such a life? Who can say? But she has it and must therefore put it to use. Where will it take her? How will she pursue it, this woman she has become, this Annelies Marie Frank confirmed by the proof of her reflection?

  Tikkun olam, Rabbi Souza had told her. Her duty to repair the world.

  How? By living. By putting words on paper.

  She steals another breath. She steals another breath as she counts another brushstroke, just as she counts another heartbeat, alone with herself, a survivor, a beating pulse, a living inheritor of all that has passed, advancing into an unfixed future, the chatterbox, the bundle of contradictions, Anne favored by God, surrounded by the hope of the dead.

  Author’s Note

  In writing this book, my priority has been to honor Anne’s story with honesty and accuracy, so I have remained loyal to the facts wherever possible. I’ve read deeply, delving into Anne’s diary as well as Holocaust histories, biographies of Anne Frank, and transcripts of interviews with people who knew her. I’ve traveled to Amsterdam twice in researching Annelies. While learning about the Jewish experience in Amsterdam during the war, I’ve visited the old Jewish Quarter, the Resistance Museum, the former Diamond District, and the Jewish enclave in the Transvaal, once left in ruins by a freezing population desperate for firewood. And specifically in relation to Anne Frank’s life, I’ve seen the bookshop where she likely picked out her tartan plaid diary, the Jewish Lyceum where she and her sister, Margot, were sent to school during the occupation, and the former Gestapo headquarters where the Franks and their friends were detained after their arrest. I’ve explored the Frank family apartment in Amsterdam. And, of course, I’ve spent hours inside the Anne Frank House itself. I’ve followed Anne Frank’s path from Amsterdam to the remains of the transit camp Westerbork in the northeastern Netherlands; to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were all shipped by the Nazis on September 3, 1944; to Bergen-Belsen inside Germany, where Anne and Margot died of typhus months later. Through continued study and access to these resources, I have done my best to portray the historical backdrop against which the Franks lived with veracity and respect.

  The story I tell in Annelies, though, is not history; it is a piece of fiction based on my research and my understanding of Anne’s diary. The prewar section of the novel is a fictionalization of actual events, although the timeline has been slightly adapted to accommodate the drama and the dialogue of the characters largely imagined. Anne’s parents were in fact already planning to go into hiding in the annex behind Otto Frank’s business when the process was accelerated by Margot’s unexpected call-up into the German labor service.

  Anne Frank’s experiences in the concentration camps of Westerbork, Birkenau, and Belsen are also imagined, but based on survivor accounts of conditions in the camps and on the accounts of people who had contact with Anne and Margot in those places. For instance, the scene in which Anne meets her friend Hanneli at the barbed-wire fence in Bergen-Belsen is based on an actual meeting often described by Hannah Pick-Goslar, who survived Belsen and lives today in Israel.

  The story of my character Anne returning to postwar Amsterdam is of course completely imagined. According to the testimony of survivors, Margot Frank died of typhus inside Belsen
in February or March of 1945. It’s said that she rolled off the pallet where she was lying, and the shock of the fall killed her. Anne Frank died a few days later, and their bodies were taken to mass graves.

  In reality, of the eight residents of the House Behind, only Pim—Anne’s father, Otto Frank—returned. I have based my character Pim on my reading of Anne’s diary, on my research, on interviews of Otto, and on my dramatic imagination. Miep, too, is based on a real person—the indomitable Miep Gies, the woman who actually saved Anne Frank’s writing from the floor of the hiding place on the day of the family’s arrest by the Gestapo. My characters of Bep, Kugler, Kleiman, and Jan are all based to some degree on the Dutch individuals who supported the Franks in hiding. So are Anne’s friend Hanneli and the others hiding out in the House Behind; Anne’s mother, Edith; Augusta and Hermann van Pels; their son, Peter; and Mr. Pfeffer. My characterizations of them are dramatic constructions based on my reading of the diary, related books, documentaries, and my own imagination.

  The important characters who are entirely fictional are the Dutch boy Raaf, the bookshop proprietor Mr. Nussbaum, and Anne’s stepmother, Dassah. Anne’s father, Otto, was indeed remarried in the 1950s to a quite wonderful and generous woman who was also a survivor. So the character of Anne’s stepmother, who for dramatic purposes is portrayed with a darker side, is purely a product of my creativity and is in no way based on any actual person. All such completely fictional characters were developed to fulfill the dramatic requirements of the plot, though I did my best to make them realistic within the historical context.

  I believe in the importance of historical accuracy in fiction and have endeavored to create a postwar world in which Anne might have lived, one that is anchored in fact. At times, as I’ve mentioned, I took the names of actual people whom Anne Frank knew and assigned them to fictional characters instead of simply creating characters completely from whole cloth. But I did so only when excluding them from the story would be too significant an omission. In creating these characters (including the character of Anne herself), I tried to synthesize the results of my research with the portrayals of people in Anne’s writings.

  I also took care not to draw conclusions about the question of the Frank family’s betrayal, to which history still lacks definitive closure. During my research for this book, I was surprised by how many theories are still being generated. The question of who betrayed Anne Frank seems to be one surrounded by a multitude of conjectures but with no real answer. As the author of the novel, I try not to come down on the side of any one particular speculation but simply present different possibilities. The only character who overtly declares her belief concerning the identity of the betrayer is the character Bep in her scene with Anne atop the Empire State Building. Here Bep expresses her conviction that it was her sister (Nelli) who betrayed the Franks to the Gestapo. This is based on a theory advanced by a book coauthored by the son of the actual Elisabeth “Bep” Voskuijl, published in the Netherlands in 2015 and entitled Silence No More. The book is premised on the testimony of Diny Voskuijl, another of Bep’s sisters, and Bep’s wartime fiancé, Bertus Hulsman. It’s the conclusion of the book’s authors that Nelly Voskuijl was a Nazi collaborator during much of the German occupation of the Netherlands and that it was she who was likely the culprit. But even in this case, I try to make it clear that this is what my character believes, not an endorsement of the theory’s validity.

  As I wrote this story, I was constantly aware of the fact that Anne Frank was a real person, a person who wrote one of the defining books of the twentieth century before dying tragically. In imagining a life for her had she survived, I hope to accomplish two things: to give Anne the life she was cheated of and, through telling the story of one girl, to tell the stories of all the Annes, thereby underscoring the lost potential of the millions who perished and reminding us of what we are missing in our world today because of their loss. Anne Frank’s legacy is one of hope, and it is my hope that if I can offer a reminder of what we have lost, we can dedicate ourselves to making a better future.

  Acknowledgments

  Sitting at a laptop, tapping away at the keyboard, can be isolating. But thankfully there have been many more people involved in the creation of this book than simply myself, and I owe them all my gratitude and deep appreciation. I hope I have made that clear to them over the years it has taken to complete this novel, but I’d also like the opportunity to do so in print.

  I must thank my incredible agent, the best of the best, Rebecca Gradinger of Fletcher and Company, whose hard work and devotion made it possible for me to continue over the long journey of the soul this project became. Her commitment, patience, and insight through multiple drafts kept me focused and on track, and honestly I could not have written this book without her. Additionally, many thanks to Christy Fletcher, founder of her amazing agency, and to Veronica Goldstein for her professional support and excellent management of the myriad details.

  My deep appreciation goes to my wonderfully patient and simply outstanding editor, Sarah Stein, who did the detailed in-the-trenches editing that balanced the narrative flow and kept the story lean and the prose well polished. Thank you, Sarah. Your dedication was immense, and I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.

  Thank you to Viking editor in chief Andrea Schulz for her devotion to the book and for her essential work in shaping the novel’s contours. And my thanks to Viking publisher Brian Tart for his commitment, as well as to all the other incredible professionals at Penguin Random House with whom I am honored to work. I’m so grateful to assistant editor Shannon Kelly, whose hard work and great dedication to the project have been invaluable; to Maureen Sugden, whose copyedit was so sensitively and skillfully done that it felt like a true collaboration; to production editor Bruce Giffords; to Nancy Resnick, interior design, and Brianna Harden, whose cover design is perfect; to marketing director Kate Stark and Mary Stone, title marketer; to publicity director Lindsay Prevette and Louise Braverman, publicist; and to the entire Penguin Random House sales staff, who have dedicated long hours of heavy lifting to bringing the book to readers. Thank you all for getting Annelies to its audience.

  My gratitude goes also to Amy Einhorn, who published my first novel, City of Women, under her imprint, and who originally bought the Anne Frank book. Thank you, Amy.

  I want to extend my appreciation as well to those who supported me along the way. Thank you to my writing consultant, Carol Edelstein of A Gallery of Readers, who acted as a valuable sounding board for the work, and to Ans van der Graaff of Ans van der Graaff Vertaalservice in Middelburg, Netherlands, whose translation skills were so helpful to me in my research. Thank you to my fellow writers Pat Stacey and Charles Mann, who listened to me go on and on about this book and continued to be supportive throughout. I also greatly value my social media connections with fellow writers Jillian Cantor, Lyndsay Faye, Kathleen Grissom, Judy Hooper, Pam Jenoff, Erika Marks, Paula McLain, Julie Ries, Erika Robuck, Kate Whouley, and Andria Williams.

  In my research, I had vital assistance from several sources. I must offer immense gratitude to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam for allowing me access to areas of the house not normally available to the public, such as the office kitchen and the private office, both spots where important scenes in the book are set. Also, I would like to pay my respects to the memory of Cornelius Suijk, who passed away in 2014 at the age of ninety. In his youth, Cor was a member of the Dutch resistance. He was also a friend of both Otto Frank and Miep Gies and served the Anne Frank House as a board member and as a director. Cor, it is an honor to have known you.

  My gratitude goes as well to the Ymere Corporation and communications adviser Andre Bakker for a tour of the Frank family flat in the Merwedeplein in Amsterdam South. Andre was quite generous with his time and expertise, and extended his tour beyond the Merwedeplein to a number of spots of historic interest across the town, including the former Jewish Quarter and the building that h
oused the so-called Joods Lyceum. He was a tremendous resource for me. But, at his request, I must also mention that he did his best to persuade me not to write about Anne Frank. As he pointed out, there were many Jewish families such as Anne’s in Amsterdam who suffered under the Nazis and came to tragic ends in places such as Birkenau and Belsen. And wouldn’t it be of greater benefit to explore their struggles instead? This was, he explained, the position of the Ymere Corporation, and why he had extended his tour beyond Anne Frank’s story, to the larger tragedy that engulfed the Jewish community during the war. My only response is that, though I both understood and deeply respected this point of view, that was not the book I was writing, and I hope that other writers take up his challenge and do justice to all the other stories that comprise the tragedy that befell Amsterdam’s Jewish population.

  Finally, I cannot forget my family, who not only supported me throughout the process but provided me with respite and encouragement: my mother, Marcia Gillham; my sister, Lisa Gillham; and my boys, Cameron Gemmell and Alexander Pavlova-Gillham.

  And as always, I must thank, from the depth of my being, my life’s partner and wife, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, who is still my touchstone in all things.

  About the Author

  David R. Gillham is the New York Times bestselling author of City of Women. He studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California before transitioning into fiction. After moving to New York City, Gillham spent more than a decade in the book business, and he now lives with his family in Western Massachusetts. In writing this book he has spent six years researching Anne Frank and her world, immersing himself in the available material and traveling to important landmarks of her life.