Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  Dear Bernd,

  Many happy returns on your birthday (all birthday letters start like that) and many more to come. I hope you’re all healthy there like we are here. We had five days off for Pentecost, that was great and I’ve been very busy. I don’t get home before 10 at night, but usually a boy walks me home. How is it going with the girl you sent us a photo of? Do write and tell me, I’m very interested in things like that. Margot has a boyfriend too but he is even younger than mine. This epistle didn’t turn out very long but I also don’t have any more time to write, since I’m going with Father to a film showing at some friends’.

  Best wishes to everyone. Write me back. Anne

  It was a letter from another world, another era, although only four years separated then and now. Anne had written him shortly before her own thirteenth birthday, and he, Buddy, was turning seventeen. “Write me back,” she wrote. And now he never could. He folded the letter and placed it back in the little folder where he kept all his important papers.

  After the Winterthur summer theater, Buddy performed in Wilfried Seyferth’s Zurich theater, in William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life. Seyferth was looking for a young actor who could also dance. Later, Buddy accepted from Kurt Götz the role of the oldest son in his play The House in Montevideo. Götz had just returned from America and was planning a tour through Switzerland; it was not a great role, but Buddy was happy to get it.

  But it turned out that that would be his last tour. Totally unexpectedly, an offer came from his ice-skating partner, Otti Rehorek, who was working at the time as a graphic artist in England. Otti had met Tom Arnold, the producer of the biggest English ice show, and showed him photographs of “Buddy and Baddy.” Tom Arnold, Rehorek wrote, had said: “I need comedians, you can start straightaway.” Otti was enthusiastic, and it sounded exceedingly tempting to Buddy too—they would be able to see a bit of the world simply by doing, for a lot of money abroad, what they had been doing for not much money at all in Switzerland. It probably also contributed to his decision that his father was somewhat skeptical about Buddy’s engagements in Bern and his small guest parts in the local dialect productions like Läppli in Zurich. “I simply can’t get used to the idea that what you are doing is supposed to be art,” he had said, and in truth Buddy had to agree. Small parts in light comedies, playing the fool in dialect plays—for Buddy, too, it was not exactly what he saw as the art of the theater.

  Birthday letter to Buddy from Anne and Otto, June 2, 1942 (photo credit 10.3)

  Birthday letter to Buddy from Anne and Otto, June 2, 1942 (photo credit 10.4)

  At the same time, he liked making people laugh. He knew that he had a talent for comedy, and when he thought back to his auditions two years earlier, he still had to suppress a grin. Adolf Manz and Ellen Widmann, two good people, had started an acting school in Basel in addition to the conservatory. It was perfect timing for Buddy and he applied, choosing as his audition piece a speech by Faust … that he performed in Hessian dialect. “Ellen Widmann laughed till she cried,” Buddy says with obvious pleasure even today, “but she didn’t accept me, she said I was welcome to audition again, but not in Hessian. So I did, and then she accepted me. Those were two great years.”

  He hesitates when he says that, then adds: “While they were stuck in hiding in Amsterdam, and then when they were arrested, while they had to go through all of that, I went to acting school and had a great time.” But Anne did get word of it; in her diary on June 30, 1944, it says: “We’ve heard from Basle that Bernd took the part of Innkeeper in Minna von Bernhelm. Artistic temperament Mummy says.” Apparently, Erich, who sometimes had business correspondence with Kleiman, occasionally let something personal slip into his letters, hoping that Kleiman would be able to pass the information along to Otto, Edith, Margot, and Anne. It was never expressed openly, and Erich and Leni never actually knew anything about the Franks’ going into hiding, Buddy is positive about that. But it seems to be some consolation to him that Anne did hear he had become an actor. Their “artistic temperaments” were obviously something that bound Anne and Buddy together.

  He had always dreamed of becoming an actor, ever since he had first gone to plays with Alice, who took him and Stephan to all the children’s theater performances: fairy tales like “Puss in Boots” and “Hansel and Gretel.” Sometimes she brought her grandchildren along to the opera too. The Bartered Bride was the first opera that Buddy had ever seen, and it made a big impression on him—he remembers it to this day. Still, opera couldn’t hold a candle to the theater. He loved being in the German equivalent of Punch-and-Judy shows, called Kasper Theater—it was with great delight that he slipped into the roles of Kasper, Seppl, and Grandma, but his favorite part was the Devil. He gave the Devil the bickering voice of one of his teachers whom he couldn’t stand, and when he spoke in the trembling voice of Grandma, it always sounded like the old woman in the stationery store, with her wobbly head on a skinny neck. Buddy would have liked to put on a show for his family every day, but at some point they said no, once a week would be enough, twice at most. At least when his cousin Anne came to visit Basel, she could never get enough of his playacting. It was especially hilarious for her when the crocodile wanted to eat Grandma, and Kasper stepped in and beat the crocodile with his club while pouring out a flood of the most terrible, unbelievable curse words—words they were absolutely not allowed to say, and that they would never have dared to repeat if anyone else was there. Buddy was always given to comedy and exaggeration.

  He was only fourteen when he and a friend memorized a few comedy numbers on ice—clown routines that they then performed in ice variety shows at the numerous Swiss resort towns. They didn’t make much money at it, but they liked it. Buddy recalls that he didn’t have to think for long when the offer came from England. He could do it for a year, he thought, with no idea that he would actually do it for more than fourteen years.

  In November 1947, Buddy and his friend and partner, Otti Rehorek, performed as “Buddy and Baddy” for the first time in Brussels. The premiere was something of a disaster, since they had been talked into appearing together with another clown, but they rehearsed their routine overnight, improved it, and then it was a success.

  Buddy wrote home on November 29 that he was making more and more contact with the ensemble, and he had the feeling that he and Baddy were welcome there, especially by the stage hands, since they, unlike the English, spoke perfect French. “Today Len Stewart told us that the head of the theater came by and said that during the premiere he didn’t clap once and cursed us, but when he saw the swing number today, he burst into spontaneous applause and thought it was wonderful!… I’d love it if you could see the show. It’s quite an experience. The crowd goes crazy every night.” In this letter, he also mentioned his citizenship: he had submitted yet another application to be recognized as a Swiss citizen and receive a Swiss passport, but unfortunately he couldn’t pursue it himself at the moment; they should try to see if they could put a little pressure on the authorities for him.

  Buddy (with fiddle) and Baddy in Holiday on Ice (photo credit 10.5)

  Buddy had rented a small apartment together with Otti and his wife, Bimbo, so he wasn’t entirely alone. That was some consolation, since he missed his family and felt homesick in spite of all the new impressions and experiences. The many letters home he wrote show how much he was still thinking about Basel and worried about his family. For instance, he once offered to send Leni money for the rent.

  At the end of 1947, Otto Frank came to Brussels to see Buddy. Buddy fetched him from the train station. It was an especially cold winter, and he was wearing many layers of clothing but was still freezing, and his fingers were frozen and numb despite the new gloves that Grandma Ida had knit for him. The cold was not all that was making him feel uncomfortable, however. He was looking forward to seeing Otto, of course he was, Otto had always been his favorite uncle, and the blows of fate had only brought them closer together; still, he felt a little awkward a
nd shy standing there at the station waiting for the train from Amsterdam. He didn’t know if he could talk normally with Otto, the way he did with everyone else in the family—tell him about the show and his plans and hopes, and maybe his fears. Was it possible? How could you expect anything normal from someone who had lived through such terrible things and lost his wife and daughters in the most unimaginably dreadful way? And this time he would be alone with him, for three days, without any support or distraction from Alice and the other members of the family—just him and Otto.

  At last the train arrived and Otto stepped out. He seemed to have put on some weight in the two years that they hadn’t seen each other, he looked better—still too thin, but his shabby coat didn’t hang loose on his body the way it did then, back when he came to Basel. He looked distinguished, in spite of his humble clothes, the thick scarf, and the old hat with earmuffs peeking out underneath. A gentleman, Buddy thought, definitely a gentleman, who had seen better days. When Otto caught sight of Buddy a smile spread across his face. He put his little cardboard suitcase and brown briefcase down on the platform and opened out his arms. Buddy ran to him and threw his arms around Otto’s neck and they hugged and kissed, the way they always had, and Buddy knew that his nervousness and fears were unwarranted, that everything would be fine.

  He had rented a room for Otto in a simple pension, and they took the streetcar there. He had suggested a taxi, because of the cold, but Otto refused. A streetcar was good enough for him, he said. Later too he would only take a taxi when it was absolutely necessary—not because he was stingy (Buddy says today that he was never stingy) but out of modesty. He never liked to show off.

  On the way to the pension, Otto asked about Alice, his sister, his brother-in-law, Grandma Ida, but above all about Stephan, who had finally recovered after months in the hospital and was back at work. “His hip joint is stiff,” Buddy said, “and Leni is afraid it will stay that way. I talked to her on the phone, she says he is constantly washing his hands now too, because of bacteria. His fear of another sepsis has given him an obsession about cleanliness, Leni says.”

  “Does he have a limp?” Otto asked.

  Buddy shook his head. “No, no limp, but he has a strange stiff way of walking, like he’s always about to fall on his face. I saw him before I left. But I thought it would go away by itself. Doesn’t seem as if it will, unfortunately.”

  “Poor boy,” Otto said. “So it’s over for him with sports then.”

  Buddy almost said that sports didn’t matter, what mattered was that he was still alive, but luckily they had just arrived at their stop and had to get out of the streetcar. “In the house of the hanged man you don’t discuss rope,” Leni would have said.

  Later, after they had been to a simple local restaurant for an even simpler meal, Otto opened his briefcase, took out a book, and put it next to Buddy’s plate. Buddy gave a start when he saw the cover: Anne Frank, he read. Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven van 14 juni 1942–1 augustus 1944.

  “There it is,” Otto said. “Anne’s diary, her Secret Annex. Just how she would have wanted.”

  Buddy had always imagined it slimmer, less of a “book,” as he put it. He carefully ran his fingertip across the rough texture of the cover, across the letters of her name, and felt strangely bashful. “It’s too bad I don’t know Dutch,” he said, to have something to say.

  “It will come out in German,” Otto said, “and in English too. Maybe even French, who knows.”

  The waiter cleared the plates and asked if they wanted anything else. “A beer,” Otto said. “And one for you, Buddy?”

  Buddy nodded. He hesitated, then asked the question after all: “Did you ever think about whether it’s right to publish her diary? It’s so private, so intimate. Alice says …”

  “I know that Alice has misgivings,” Otto interrupted him. “She thinks that anyone who’s not in the family might not be able to understand it the way it should be understood, or might even think it’s boring. Just a child’s thoughts and feelings.”

  The waiter brought the beer, and Otto took a sip before continuing: “Anne was a child, it’s true, but she had an intellectual maturity that most adults don’t have and maybe never will have. I didn’t know my own child until I read her diary. That’s painful. I never knew her, and you, Buddy, you never knew her either, none of us knew what was really going on inside her. She was a child to me, and I loved her the way you love a child. She annoyed me a lot of the time too. I made her feel better when there was an air raid and she cried with fear, I stroked her hair and let her sleep in my bed. I laughed at her jokes and got mad at her when she was fresh and turned everyone else against her. She was a noisy, carefree kid to me, I never saw her inner depths. And now I can’t show her that I see who she is. I can’t show her how much I admire her, how proud I am. It’s very painful to realize that. She was a very special person, and I only ever saw her as a child. I felt the same way about her diary: at first I thought it was only a child’s private thoughts, which I reacted to so strongly because I was there and had lived through everything with her, and now I could suddenly see the whole situation and everything in the Secret Annex through her eyes. But then I showed part of the diary to my friend Albert Cauvern, and to Dr. Baschwitz, and read excerpts to Werner and Jetty Cahn. All experts. It was only from their reaction that I realized this was more than a young girl’s diary, much more. Anne was wrong a lot of the time, she was often unfair and too quick to judge others, but she wrote something of universal significance, about living together in difficult circumstances, about humanity itself, and about believing in life. Yes, my opinion changed and now I’m sure of it, it was right to publish her diary. And I’m not the only one who’s sure.” Otto’s voice had grown softer and softer; now he opened his briefcase again and took out a crumpled piece of newspaper and showed it to Buddy. It was written in Dutch, and the headline, in big black letters, said, “Kinderstem.”

  Original Dutch edition of Anne Frank’s diary (photo credit 10.6)

  “Kindesstimme?” Buddy guessed at the German translation. “ ‘The Voice of a Child’?”

  Otto nodded. “A very intelligent man wrote this article for Het Parool, a Dutch newspaper. Dr. Jan Romein, Professor of History in Amsterdam. Should I translate some parts for you?”

  “Yes, please do,” Buddy said, and Otto read him what the article said, translated into German. He read so smoothly, without hunting for the right words or correcting himself, that Buddy knew he had read it many times already and translated it many times, not only in his mind.

  By chance a diary written during the war years has come into my possession … If all the signs do not deceive me, this girl would have become a talented writer had she remained alive. Having arrived here at the age of four from Germany, she was able within ten years to write enviably pure and simple Dutch, and showed an insight into the failings of human nature—her own not excepted—so infallible that it would have astonished one in an adult, let alone in a child. At the same time she also highlighted the infinite possibilities of human nature, reflected in humor, tenderness and love, which are perhaps even more astonishing, and from which one might perhaps shrink, especially when they are applied to very intimate matters, were it not that rejection and acceptance remain so profoundly childlike.

  That this girl could have been abducted and murdered proves to me that we have lost the fight against human bestiality. And for the same reason we shall lose it again, in whatever form inhumanity may reach out for us, if we are unable to put something positive in its place. The promise that we shall never forget or forgive is not enough. It is not even enough to keep that promise. Passive and negative rejection is too little, it is as nothing. Active and positive “total” democracy—politically, socially, economically and culturally—is the only solution; the building of a society in which talent is no longer destroyed, repressed and oppressed, but discovered, nurtured and assisted, wherever it may appear. And with all our good intentions, we are st
ill as far from that democracy as we were before the war.1

  Otto fell silent, as though exhausted after hard work, and Buddy suddenly noticed that he had been stroking the book the whole time, the way you stroke a child’s head. Otto had apparently noticed it too because he reached out his own hand and placed it on Buddy’s, so that now two hands were on Anne’s diary.

  “This article got a lot of attention,” Otto said. He carefully refolded the newspaper clipping and tucked it back into his briefcase. “A lot of people read it and wanted to know who this child was. And now here is the book.”

  Otto returned to the topic of the diary several more times in the next few days. He told Buddy how hard it had been to find a publisher: the big presses had turned it down, they didn’t see a market for it, they presumably thought that so soon after the terrible war no one would want to read the thoughts and feelings of some Jewish girl who spent two years in hiding with her parents, her sister, and four other Jews. “To some extent they’re right,” Otto said. “A lot of people just want to enjoy themselves now, to make up for the hard times they have behind them. But not everyone is like that. Not everyone acts as though nothing happened, as though this hell had not taken place. The book has been on the market for six months, and I get more and more letters from people, especially young people, who have read Anne’s diary and write to tell me how much it moved them. It changed their lives, they say. And I answer every single letter. I see it as my duty to contribute to a better understanding between people, in Anne’s memory.” After a short pause, he added: “That is the only thing I can do for her now.” All of a sudden he looked unfathomably sad again.

  Buddy wondered if it wasn’t better to let old wounds heal rather than constantly reopen them. He had the feeling that Otto was spending a lot more of his time and energy on Anne’s diary than on his company. He cautiously raised the question with Otto.