His face has grown older, his skin is pale, and wrinkles extend from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Even so, she can still see the young man’s features in his face. Even the boy’s. And she wonders if he can still see the young woman, the girl, in her face. “You can’t let yourself get depressed,” she says.
Otto wants to answer, but at that moment the conductor blows the train whistle, shrill and unambiguous. The train jerks, steam comes hissing out of the engine’s smokestack, and the train starts to move and then pulls out of the station. Otto leans out the window and waves. He calls out something, Leni sees his lips move but can’t make out the words. She takes out her handkerchief and waves back, and keeps waving even after the train has left the station and vanished into the gray air.
No, this isn’t how she imagined her life. Stephan, it’s now clear, will recover, that’s the most important thing, but it will still take a while. Buddy will leave home in the next few days; he has been hired in Bern. Youth goes ever onward, it’s the way of the world. It’s the old people who are left behind, Grandma Ida and Alice. And Erich. And her. She is fifty-two years old, her youth is behind her. What is left for her to expect from the future? It doesn’t matter, she will carry on the way she always has. And anyway, fifty-two isn’t that old. Who knows how many years she still has ahead of her? What is it that Jews say on birthdays? “May you live to be a hundred and twenty”? Decisively, she turns around. When she steps out of the train station, she sees a few isolated snowflakes drifting through the air. She shivers and wraps herself tighter in her coat and sets off on the road home.
Afterword
The present book could only be written because I found an enormous cache of letters, documents, and photographs from the Frank and Elias families that had been kept for decades in the attic of our house. There were around six thousand items in total.
When my husband, Buddy, my sons Patrick and Oliver, and I moved from Berlin to Herbstgasse in 1986, I took over my mother-in-law’s antiques business. She was living by that point in La Charmille old-age home, along with her brother Herbert. The first few years were difficult ones, since I was responsible not only for the business and taking care of my family but also for running the house. Along with the other tasks I set myself, there was also taking care of the attic. It was packed solid with furniture, crates, boxes, suitcases—I was curious what was in them, of course, especially the two white armoires in which I found wonderful things: sequined dresses, an opera hat, a tuxedo with tails, evening gowns, furs, hats. I also discovered a box covered in floral-print fabric that contained letters, lots of letters, mostly loose but others lovingly tied up with silk ribbons. It took some time before I worked up the courage to read them, and even longer before I understood that these were family letters, since many of the names were unknown to me and some were written in the old Sütterlin style of handwriting that I could mostly read but that was sometimes hard to decipher. My husband too was not always able to help—of course he knew the names of his uncles, Robert, Herbert, and Otto, but other names were as new to him as they were to me.
In the following years I rummaged around in the attic every now and then, but I did not have time to explore everything more carefully until 2001, after I closed the antiques store. By then, all the family members from the older generation had died. I found more boxes and more letters, including letters from Otto Frank, Margot, and Anne, some in suitcases, others in crates. I eventually realized that these were letters that Leni and Erich, my in-laws, and Alice, Leni’s mother, had kept for years. And while dusting the house, I found a slim little book in the salon’s bookcase—more of a hardcover schoolbook than a book—containing Alice’s memories as she wrote them up on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. I found another little volume titled “Klärchen,” written by Alfred Stern, Alice Frank née Stern’s cousin, a historian and professor. He had written it for his wife, Klärchen, and given it to her on their twenty-fifth anniversary, sketching out the history of his family. Alfred and Klärchen were cousins who had married within the family; that’s how it was in the nineteenth century.
I was very surprised one day when I came across a large leather suitcase with hundreds of letters that Buddy, my husband, had sent home to his family from every corner of the world. It was a great joy for me to be able to get to know my husband better through these letters.
And I was especially shaken when I found Otto’s letters that he had sent to Herbstgasse after the war, from Auschwitz, Kattowitz, and later from Amsterdam.
It was clear to my husband and me that these treasures could not just stay lying in the attic. It was the kind of material for a family chronicle that you seldom find.
I reported on the find at a meeting of the Anne Frank-Fonds, and it was decided to have a specialist organize and archive the mass of materials properly. An experienced and well-known historian, Dr. Peter Toebak, agreed to do it, and spent two half days a week in our attic for almost two years. He set up his computer in the added-on story where Otto Frank and his second wife, Fritzi, had lived for almost eight years, answering the letters that came from people all over the world who had read his daughter’s diary.
When the documents were fully archived, the valuable shipment was packed up and sent to the Anne Frank Foundation’s archive in Amsterdam, where every page was digitized or microfilmed. The documents are currently on loan there.
The Anne Frank-Fonds also decided that the letters and documents should be turned into a book, and I was asked to be in charge of that process. It meant I had to go through the many letters and documents and select the most significant and interesting ones, the ones with the most information about the family’s life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dr. Toebak was very helpful and competent assisting me during the two and a half years I spent sifting through the documents. I am very grateful to him.
Lastly, we needed an experienced writer, preferably a literary author, who would be up to the task of turning these letters into a book that would do justice, at least partly, to the history of the Stern, Frank, and Elias families. After all, in truth there was only a one-sided correspondence—only letters sent to the family, not the family’s answers.
It was Eva Koralnik of the Liepman literary agency in Zurich who suggested Mirjam Pressler, a writer who had already translated the critical edition of The Diary of Anne Frank into German and had put together the new reader’s edition (called The Definitive Edition in English). This suggestion turned out to be a great stroke of luck, since the collaboration with Mirjam Pressler was not only pleasant and friendly but also interesting and stimulating. I gave her approximately five hundred letters that I had selected, along with numerous documents and photographs. We spent many weekends with each other, during which she asked us many detailed questions. The present book is based on this foundation.
It is a great satisfaction to me to have completed this work. In so doing, I have become very, very close to the wonderful family I married into.
Gerti Elias
April 2009
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Top Right Quadrant.
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Bottom Left Quadrant.
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Bibliography
Amt für Wissenschaft und Kunst der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, ed. “Früher wohnten wir in Frankfurt…” Frankfurt, 1985.
Anne Frank Stichting, ed. Die Welt der Anne Frank. Amsterdam, 1985.
Backhaus, Fritz, Gisela Engel, Robert Liberles, and Margarete Schlüter, eds. Die Frankfurter Judengasse: Jüdisches Leben in der Neuzeit. Frankfurt: Societäts, 2006.
Benz, Wolfgang, ed. Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1991.
Frank, Anne. Anne Frank Tageb
uch (Leseausgabe). Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1991.
———. Tagebücher der Anne Frank (Historisch-kritische Ausgabe). Edited by Rijks instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie. Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1988.
Grab, Walter. Der deutsche Weg der Judenemanzipation, 1789–1938. Munich: Piper, 1991.
Herbert, Ulrich, Karin Orth, and Christoph Diekmann. Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2002.
Herlitz, Georg, and Bruno Kirschner, eds. Jüdisches Lexikon. 2nd ed. Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1987.
Heuberger, Rachel, and Helga Krohn. Hinaus aus dem Ghetto … Juden in Frankfurt am Main, 1800–1950. Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1988.
Historischen Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, ed. Anne aus Frankfurt: Leben und Lebenswelt Anne Franks. Frankfurt, 1990.
Kolb, Eberhard. Bergen-Belsen, 1943–1945: Vom “Aufenthaltslager” zum Konzentrationslager. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002.
Lee, Carol Ann. Otto Franks Geheimnis. Munich: Piper, 2005.
Longerich, Peter, ed. Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden. Munich: Piper, 1980.
Seifert, Claudia. Das Leben war bescheiden und schön. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 2008.
Stapferhaus, Lenzburg, ed. Anne Frank und wir. Zurich: Chronos, 1995.
Stern, Alfred. Zur Familiengeschichte: Klärchen zum 22. März 1906 gewidmet. Privately printed. Zurich: Buchdruckerei Berichthaus (formerly Ulrich & Co.), 1906.
Anne Frank’s great-great-grandparents Elkan Juda Cahn and his wife, Betty (photo insert i1.1)
Anne Frank’s great-grandmother Cornelia Stern née Cahn as a child, circa 1844 (photo insert i1.2)
Alice Frank as a child, painted by the Frankfurt painter Professor Schlesinger, circa 1869 (photo insert i1.3)
Michael Frank, around seventeen years old, circa 1868 (photo insert i1.4)
Alice and Michael Frank
(from their betrothal announcement and invitation) (photo insert i1.5)
Portrait of Leni Frank, around five years old (photo insert i1.6)
Michael Frank, circa 1908 (photo insert i1.7)
Margot and Anne Frank with the neighborhood children, circa 1930. Left to right: Buddy Elias (their cousin), Maitly Könitzer, Gertrud Naumann, Anne, Marianne Stab, Werner Beck, Margot, Hilde Stab, Irmgard Naumann, and Butzy Könitzer. (photo insert i1.8)
Cornelia Stern with her granddaughter, Leni, circa 1910 (photo insert i1.9)
Alice Frank with her daughter-in-law Edith and grandchildren Margot and Stephan, Frankfurt, 1927 (photo insert i1.10)
Stephan and Buddy Elias, 1934 (photograph owned by Anne Frank) (photo insert i1.11)
Margot, Stephan, and Anne being fed by Edith (photo insert i1.12)
Margot Frank, circa 1941 (photo insert i1.13)
Anne Frank, circa 1941 (photo insert i1.14)
Buddy and Gerti Elias’s wedding, February 1, 1965, in the Basel Art Museum. Left to right: Otto Frank, Herbert Frank, Fritzi Frank, Stephan Elias, Thesy Wiedner (Gerti’s sister), Buddy Elias, Erich Elias, Leni Elias, Karl Wiedner (Gerti’s father), Gerti Elias, Ado Wiedner (Gerti’s sister). (photo insert i1.15)
Photo Credits
Elias Family Archive/Frank and Anne Frank Archive, Amsterdam: prl.1, prl.2, p01.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14, 3.16, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, 4.12, 4.13, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, p02.1, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.9, p03.1, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.7, 11.2, 11.3, 12.1, 13.1, 13.2, 16.1
Jewish Museum Frankfurt: 2.2
Jürgen Bauer: 1.1, 1.3, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 2.1, 3.6, 7.4, 9.10, 9.11, 11.1
Elias Private Archive, Basel: 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, 10.6, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, 19.1
Universität Heidelberg: 3.15
INSERT
Elias Family Archive/Frank and Anne Frank Archive, Amsterdam: i1.4, i1.5, i1.7, i1.8 and i1.9, i1.10 and i1.11, i1.12 and i1.13, i1.14
Jürgen Bauer: i1.1, i1.2, i1.3, i1.6
Elias Private Archive:i1.15
We thank Christoph Knoch and the members of the Anne Frank Fund in Basel, and the Anne Frank Stichting in Amsterdam, for their cooperation and friendly support.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mirjam Pressler is one of Germany’s most beloved authors. She was the German translator of Anne Frank’s diary.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Damion Searls is a writer and an award-winning translator of authors such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jon Fosse, Robert Walser, and Hans Keilson.
Anne Frank's Family Page 35