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Auguste van Pels and Anne and Margot Frank imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen

Auguste van Pels and Anne and Margot Frank were together in Bergen-Belsen camp from 3 November to 7 February. On 7 February, Auguste was selected for transfer to Raguhn. Shortly afterwards, Anne and Margot died of typhus.

Event

Nov. 3, 1944 - Feb. 28, 1945

52.759139 N 9.905833 E

Lohheide

Niedersachsen

Duitsland

Anne and Margot were imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen for about four months, until their deaths in February 1945. Details of their imprisonment have only been provided through various witnesses.

After a storm on the night of 7 November 1944 caused the tents in Bergen-Belsen to collapse, the women, including Anne, Margot and Auguste van Pels, were locked up in a few storage huts for several days. They were then housed in huts in the Kleines Frauenlager, which was next to the Sternlagerlag.[1]

Ruth Wiener, a girl in Margot's parallel class at the Jewish Lyceum, was imprisoned in the Sternlager and wrote in her diary on 20 December 1944: "Margot and Anne Frank are in the other camp."[2]

Annelore Daniel, who had also been on the 1 November 1944 transport from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, were put in the same hut as Anne, Margot and Auguste van Pels. Annelore Daniel stated that they were apathetic, did not work and mainly stayed together as the three of them. The testimonies of Rachel Frankfoorder and sisters Janny and Lientje Brilleslijper differ slightly from this picture. According to Janny Brilleslijper, in Bergen-Belsen, she and her sister Lientje, the Frank sisters and the Daniel sisters tried to help each other and saw each other regularly. Almost nothing else is known about Auguste van Pels in Bergen-Belsen.

Meetings with Hanneli and Martha

Rachel Frankfoorder recalled suspecting that Anne and Margot sometimes went to the partition with the Sternlager to meet someone there. This suspicion turned out to be correct. At the fence that separated the Kleines Frauenlager from the Sternlager, Anne met her good friend Hanneli Goslar. Martha van Collem was also present at two of those meetings, and helped Hanneli put together a package.[3]

In all likelihood, Anne and Hanneli Goslar met between 23 January and 7 February .[4] Someone came to get Hanneli because there was someone on the other side of the fence who had seen her friend Anne in the camp.[5] Contact with Anne was established through Auguste van Pels. Margot was probably too ill by then to come out of the hut. After the friends first cried together, they then briefed each other on their experiences. As conditions where Anne was were a lot worse than in the Sternlager, Hanneli Goslar went in search of food and clothes for Anne. The next evening they met again at the fence and Hanneli Goslar threw a parcel over the barbed wire. Much to Anne's frustration, the parcel was caught by another woman, who then ran off with it. Eventually, Hanneli managed to put together another parcel and this time it did reach Anne. In total, the girlfriends met at the fence three times.[6]

Meeting Margot Rosenthal

Hanneli recalled Anne telling her that she thought her parents were dead. This is possibly why Anne did not speak to fellow inmate Margot Rosenthal, who arrived in Bergen-Belsen from Auschwitz in January 1945, until after meeting Hanneli, and who would have been able to tell Anne and Margot that their mother Edith had survived the 30 October 1944 selection.[7]

Typhus

When, on 7 February 1945, Auguste van Pels was selected for a transport to Raguhn (subcamp of Buchenwald) for forced labour, Anne and Margot were left behind. Possibly Anne had been moved within the camp after her encounters with Hanneli Goslar, or transferred to an infirmary. After Hanneli Goslar's father died, she did not come out of the hut for several days. When she finally went looking for Anne, the small women's camp was empty and she could not find her.

Rachel Frankfoorder recalled seeing how Anne and Margot became increasingly ill and at the end showed clear signs of typhus. According to her, at one point they were simply no longer there and so she assumed they had died. Like Auguste van Pels, Rachel Frankfoorder was put on a transport to Raguhn, so her observation of typhus in the Frank sisters must be from before 7 February 1945.

Nanette (Nanny) Blitz, a classmate of Anne at the Jewish Lyceum, also met Anne several times in Bergen-Belsen and saw that Anne was very thin and had typhus. Nanny Blitz entered the same camp section as Anne from the Sternlager on 5 December 1945, after her father's death. They met several times in January 1945. Nanette Blitz recalled about the same period: "I don't think I saw Margot standing. She was lying there. I hugged Anne, but I don't remember Margot standing, she was already completely weakened. And everything shrank - brains, stomachs, everything - they were, she was completely... and I hardly spoke to her. She was already half gone, completely weakened... But Anne, I did talk to her, several times, and I think every time she came, Margot was lying there in a hut, she wasn't well."[8]

Janny Brilleslijper, who worked as a nurse in the camp, also recognised the symptoms of epidemic typhus in Anne and Margot and stated that the sisters had also been in an infirmary hut.[9] Although several witnesses like Janny stated that the sisters had been in an infirmary hut, it is as yet unclear where and when exactly this would have been.

In the end, Margot and Anne died of typhus sometime in the month of February 1945.[10]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Bas von Benda-Beckmann, Na het Achterhuis. Anne Frank en de andere onderduikers in de kampen, Amsterdam: Querido, 2020, p. 248.
  2. ^ Wiener Library, Ruth Wiener Collection, 1962/1/3/1, Diary Ruth Wiener, 20 november 1944.
  3. ^ Von Benda-Beckmann, Na het Achterhuis, p. 264.
  4. ^ De ontmoeting moet vóór 7 februari zijn geweest, omdat Auguste van Pels die dag naar Raguhn vertrok en ze via Auguste met elkaar in contact konden komen. Het Nederlandse Rode Kruis, Den Haag, 2050, inv.nr. 949, Netherland names extracted by I.R.O. I.T.S.; transportlijst 3 september 1944. Ook weten we door een bewaard gebleven lijst dat de grootmoeder van Hanneli Goslar op 23 januari 1945 een pakket via het Zwitserse Rode Kruis heeft ontvangen. Intenational Tracing Service, bad Arolsen, doc.nr. 3396827#1, Brief Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale aan Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, Generalführer Hartmann, 23 januari 1945, met opgaven van 51 ontvangers.
  5. ^ Interview Hanna Elisabeth Pick, ‘Persönliche Erinnerungen an Anne Frank’, Mitteilungsblatt, uitgegeven door het Verband der Einwanderer deutsch-jüdische Herkunft, nr. 28, 12 juli 1957.
  6. ^ Anne Frank Stichting (AFS), Anne Frank Collectie (AFC), Getuigenarchief, interview Hannah Pick-Goslar, 6-7 mei 2009.
  7. ^ Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, cat.nr. 195, inv. nr. 11723rm, Hol, verklaring Margot Drach-Rosenthal, z.d.
  8. ^ AFS, AFC, Getuigenarchief, interview Nanette König-Blitz, 2 augustus 2012.
  9. ^ Willy Lindwer, De laatste zeven maanden. Vrouwen in het spoor van Anne Frank, Hilversum: Gooi&Sticht, 1988, p.99.
  10. ^ Von Benda-Beckmann, Na het Achterhuis, p. 273.