by Sharon Dogar
Her work and beliefs are protected and continued by the Anne Frank House and Foundation, which researches all forms of racism and genocide, including the recent rise of Islamophobia in Holland. They continue to encourage new generations to understand the nature and meaning of the Holocaust.
Otto Frank died in August 1980. He was eighty-one years old.
Fritz Pfeffer survived the October selections in Auschwitz and was transported to Neungamme camp, where he died alone, of enterocolitis, on December 20, 1944.
He was fifty-five years old. Charlotte married Dr. Pfeffer posthumously in 1953.
Liese, Peter's first "girlfriend," is a complete fiction. She exists as a way of representing the disappeared and disappearing Jewish citizens during the years of Peter's hiding.
* * *
Author's note
Writing historical fiction for the first time has proved a challenging task. Life within the Annex has been brilliantly portrayed by Anne; in Part One of my novel, her diary was my principal guide. Sometimes, in the interest of continuity of narrative, an event may have been moved. I hope avid diary readers will forgive me. I have tried to remain true to the spirit of the diary and the events that took place within the Annex.
The job of recording what may have happened to the occupants of the Annex once they arrived in the camps has been more difficult to unravel. In attempting to write about survival in Auschwitz and Mauthausen, I have at all times been guided by the testimony and evidence of camp survivors. I've read many books, but was especially moved by Primo Levi, whose clear-eyed testimony portrays without sentiment the reality of day-to-day life in Auschwitz.
My thanks to both Buddy Elias and Carol Anne Lee for reading the manuscript and making some invaluable suggestions.
* * *
Further information
BOOKS
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (Bantam, 1993)
Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold, Anne Frank Remembered (Simon and Schuster, 2009)
Elie Wiesel, Night (Hill and Wang, 2006)
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
Anne Holm, I Am David (Harcourt, 2004)
Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce (Abacus, 1991)
Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus (Pantheon, 1996)
Peter Duffy, The Bielski Brothers (Harper, 2004)
Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Houghton Mifflin, 1998)
Olga Lengal, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz (Academy Chicago Publications, 1995)
DVDS
Anne Frank Remembered (2010) Documentary. Includes a few seconds of the only film footage of Anne Frank.
WEBSITES
www.yadvashem.org
www.annefrank.org
* * *
Acknowledgments
MY THANKS TO:
Charlie Sheppard, my editor. Klaus Flugge and Sarah Pakenham at Andersen. Barry Cunningham at Chicken House. Margaret Raymo and Karen Walsh at Houghton Mifflin. Barbara Bradshaw, Paula Barry, Steve, Charlie, and Felix Bishop, Kate Dando, the Fiddes family, Danny Lee, Suzy Paul, and Rosemary Turan for their support and friendship. Andy Kelly, Gertjaen Brock, Bruce and Tess Blenkinsop for their help with information. Joy Court. Jem. Xa, Ella, and Alastair White for living with me as I lived through writing this...
* * *