The Last Secrets of Anne Frank

March 15, 2023
Another fresh story about one of the 20th century's most recognizable historical figures. Anne Frank (1929-1945) remains perhaps the most moving figure to come out of the Holocaust, and publishers continue to turn out her famous diary and books describing her tragic life. In 1933, her German family fled to Holland after Hitler came to power. Her father, Otto Frank, ran a food product business that prospered even after the Nazi invasion in May 1940. When Jews were forbidden to own businesses, he transferred ownership to a non-Jewish executive. After the Nazis began deporting Jews, he converted part of his warehouse into a disguised annex and went into hiding in July 1942 with his family and another one. There they remained for more than two years while the business continued, fed and supported by loyal non-Jewish employees. In August 1944, not long before the liberation, they were betrayed, arrested, and sent to extermination camps. Only Otto survived. In this revealing addition to the history, Dutch writers van Wijk-Voskuijl and De Bruyn focus on the employees who knew of the secret annex. Once Anne's diary became widely known, journalists, scholars, and tourists called regularly. Three enjoyed the attention, but one--van Wijk-Voskuijl's mother, Bep Voskuijl--rarely gave interviews or discussed the war years at home. She died in 1983, long before her son began researching this book. Nonetheless, the authors use surviving sources to deliver a moving account of a well-known story and make a convincing case that Bep was Anne's closest friend and never recovered from the trauma of her arrest and death. The authors devote over half the book to events following the arrest to the present day, and some readers may consider details of van Wijk-Voskuijl's unhappy marriage an unnecessary detour. Regardless, they will welcome new evidence--if not proof--that it was a close member of Bep's family who betrayed the Franks. An important contribution to the literature on Anne Frank.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 13, 2023
Journalist De Bruyn and retired marketing manager Wijk-Voskuijl deliver a poignant portrait of the latter’s mother, Elizabeth “Bep” Voskuijl, an employee of Otto Frank’s who helped hide the Frank family in Amsterdam. Seeking to help solve the mystery of who betrayed the Franks to the Gestapo, Wijk-Voskuijl recounts his mother’s struggles during his childhood, including an attempted suicide. “If my mother just started thinking about the Secret Annex,” he writes, “she would get migraines, slip into a depression and spend much of the next day in bed.” Wijk-Voskuijl also notes that unlike Miep Gies, Bep’s colleague and fellow member of the Opetka Circle that hid the Franks, his mother avoided all recognition for her efforts in retrieving Anne’s diary from the annex. Though the authors uncover evidence that Bep’s sister, Nelly, collaborated with the Nazis, and describe numerous instances in which Bep sought to hide or destroy material from that period in her life (most tantalizingly, she instructed another of her sons to burn dozens of letters after her death; he did so, before reading them), the theory that Bep’s depression was caused by guilt over betraying the Franks isn’t definitively proven. Still, this is an anguished investigation into one of the Holocaust’s enduring mysteries.

Starred review from May 1, 2023
Though the story of Anne Frank is told and retold, her indelible diary read and reread, unsolved mysteries remain about those who hid for 761 days in the secret annex above Anne's father's business in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation and those who cared for them. One puzzle has been why Bep Voskuijl, the youngest of the loyal group of employees protecting the imperiled Jews, hasn't been celebrated as others have, especially given how close she and Anne became. De Bruyn, a journalist consumed by Anne Frank's story, joins forces with van Wijk-Voskuijl, Bep's son, to fully investigate Bep's role and the larger question of who betrayed the people for whom Bep risked her life. As a boy van Wijk-Voskuijl knew how profoundly traumatized his mother was, but couldn't fathom the source of her guilt and shame. He and De Bruyn tracked down everyone alive who might be able to shed light on Bep's reluctance to talk about her part in the most famous of Holocaust stories. What emerges is not only a portrait of Bep in all her altruism and suffering, but also of her sister, Nelly, who scandalously worked for and had affairs with Nazis. Here, too, is van Wijk-Voskuijl's own astounding struggle. The result is a superbly well-written, intimate, engrossing, and heartrending reckoning with the endless damage done by genocide.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.