Victor Kugler

According to his baptismal record, Victor Kugler was born on 5 June 1900 and baptized on 10 June 1900.^[1] A number of sources mention the same date. The place of birth was Hohenelbe.^[2] His birthplace Hohenelbe is in the Czech Republic. The area where it is located was part of Austria-Hungary until 1918. The present name is Vrchlabí.^[3] Kugler's forged identity card, with the name Johannes Kuinders, had the date of birth as 12 December 1900.^[4]

The identity of Victor Kugler's father is unknown. His mother Emilie Kugler married the miner Franz Klose in about 1909. The family moved to Duisburg, where Victor's two half-brothers and two half-sisters were born: Rudolf, Friedrich, Erna en Grete Emilie.^[5]

In 1911 he became a pupil at the Rektoratschule Norbertinum. In 1914 he went back to Hohenelbe to do a course at Fachschule für Weberei (Technical School for Weaving).

He worked for a short while at the Kalisyndikat in Berlin. Towards the end of the First World War he was in the Austrian navy, patrolling the Adriatic Sea. As a consequence of Europe's political realignment, he received Czechoslovakian nationality. He then worked for two years as an electrician in a mine in Gladbeck. In 1920 he worked briefly for the Deutsche Maschinenfabrik AG (Demag) in Utrecht. He stayed in Utrecht and married Laua Maria Buntenbach in 1928. Kugler was then employed by Frans van Angeren, owner of a patisserie and lunchroom. Van Angeren also importeded baking ingredients, and so he became involved in the pectine trade.

In July 1933 Kugler met Otto Frank through Van Angeren. He then went to work for Opekta and moved to Hilversum. Somewhere in the twenties Kugler gave up his Czechoslovakian citizenship and opted for German nationality. In 1933 he applied for Dutch naturalisation, which was denied in 1936 but later approved in 1938.

As Otto Frank's business problems increased during the first years of the Second World War, Kugler took over the management of Gies & Co. He was one of the four office workers and therefore fully aware of the plans to go into hiding. As a result of the raid on 4 August 1944, he was arrested and imprisoned in Amsterdam's "Huizen van Bewaring II and I" before being moved to Amersfoort and Zwolle. While in Zwolle he was helped by Gies representative Martin Brouwer. At the end of March 1945 he was in a column of prisoners near Zevenaar when they were subjected to shelling by British planes. He made a run for it and eventually arrived in Hilversum on Good Friday, taking a route through Rheden and Barneveld.

Kugler was widowed at the end of 1952. He later married an Opekta employee and took her and his new in-laws to Canada. He had various jobs there, including working as an insurance agent and an electrician. After he retired, and with the agreement of Otto Frank and the Anne Frank House, he gave a large number of lectures on the history of the Secret Annex and on the diary. In the late seventies his health, especially his mental health, declined. It was during this period that a halting collaboration took place with journalist Helen Shapiro, who wrote his biography. The manuscript remained on the shelf for years, and after Shapiro’s death it was passed on to journalist Rick Kardonne. He edited it and then published it in 2008. Victor Kugler died at the age of 81 in a Canadian hospital.

Addresses: Eemnesserweg 56, Hilversum ('40-'55). Kugler lived in Hohenelbe and at different places in the Ruhr. From 1920 he lived in Utrecht, and from 1933 at different addresses in Hilversum. In 1955 he moved to Canada.^[6]