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‘My Friend Anne Frank’ tells the incredible story of how Anne’s best friend survived the Holocaust
(JTA) — One spring morning in 1934, two little girls followed their mothers to a corner grocery store in Amsterdam. The mothers, hearing each other speak German to their daughters, discovered they were both Jewish refugees who had recently fled Nazi Germany. The two girls peeked shyly at each other from behind their mothers’ skirts, one of them slight with dark, glossy hair, the other taller and fairer.
Those two girls were Anne Frank and Hannah Pick-Goslar. One was to become the most famous victim of the Holocaust, whose diary documented two years in hiding before the Nazis found her family and she perished at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15. The other narrowly survived and made her way to pre-state Israel, eventually enjoying a new life that grew to include three children, 11 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren.
The day after their grocery store encounter, the girls recognized each other at the Sixth Montessori School in Amsterdam and became instant best friends. They could not predict that their final encounter would come 11 years later, against all odds, at Bergen-Belsen.
Pick-Goslar spent decades telling her story through interviews and lectures, but her recollections have only just been published for the first time in a memoir, “My Friend Anne Frank,” written with the help of journalist Dina Kraft. She did not live to see its publication on June 6: Pick-Goslar died in October, six months into writing the book and two weeks short of her 94th birthday, leaving Kraft to finish her account.
Kraft spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the life of Pick-Goslar, who lived out the future stolen from her dear friend.
The conversation with Kraft, a onetime JTA reporter, has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
JTA: What was it like to tell Pick-Goslar’s story together with her?
Kraft: It was a remarkable experience being able to work with her. We had these very intense interviews where I was asking her to really dig back into her memory. A lot of Holocaust survivors, a lot of survivors of trauma, tend to tell their story — not on autopilot, exactly — but they have a script. It’s perfectly understandable, it’s a tool of self-preservation.
So I was asking her to dive deeper and look more intensely within, and that was not always easy. There were times we would finish the interview after a couple of hours and she would say, “I’m just exhausted, I need to lie down.” And I would say, “Me too,” because it was just exhausting — we were recounting very hard moments.
It got to the point where she would come in the morning and say, “I’m having bad dreams again,” and I would say, “Yeah, me too, I’m having bad dreams also.” Because it was so much of trying to step into her shoes and step into her mindset, and also reading very intensely — it was very much a research project too.
How did Pick-Goslar remember her childhood and friendship with Frank before the war?
She remembers life before the war as incredibly warm and loving. They were wrapped up in a supportive familial environment. Although both she and Anne were refugees from Germany, they came over very young — Anne was 4 and Hannah was 5.
Their parents had a hard time adapting, especially the mothers. Hannah’s mother was born and bred in Berlin, very much a creature of German culture. Her father was a high-ranking official in the Weimar government, so they lived very close to the Reichstag. On top of being horrified that they had just been kicked out of this country they viewed as home, Hannah’s family went back 1,000 years in Germany. So they were heartbroken about their country taking this terrible turn into darkness.
But for Hannah and Anne, it was a very nice life.
What kind of person was Frank, according to her friend?
She was very spunky. She had lots to say and she exhausted the adults around her. She was always challenging them, asking difficult questions, prodding, restless and impatient. The girls loved to play Monopoly, but Anne would get restless and walk off, which is frustrating for a friend! They would push back furniture in the house and do gymnastics together. Later on, when the Germans invaded and they only had other Jewish girlfriends to play with, they formed a club to play ping pong and go for ice cream.
Anne was such a know-it-all that Hannah’s mother had a phrase about her. She said, “God knows all, but Anne Frank knows better!”
But Hannah really saw her as a regular kid — she was just her friend, Anne Frank. She was not an icon of any kind, and she seemed more ordinary than she seemed extraordinary.
In July 1942, Pick-Goslar found her friend’s apartment empty. Like everyone else, she was told that the Franks escaped to Switzerland — not knowing they had actually gone into hiding nearby. What happened to Pick-Goslar while Frank went into hiding?
Hannah was deported a year after Anne went into hiding. In that year, she went back to school. The anti-Jewish laws meant that you couldn’t sit on benches, go to swimming pools, be on a tram, ride your bicycle — and you couldn’t go to school with non-Jewish children.
So Hannah and Anne were both fortunate to be accepted to the Jewish Lyceum, considered one of the more prestigious Jewish schools in Amsterdam under German occupation. But in the fall of 1942, the deportations had already begun. So every day there was a different student and friend missing from class, and different teachers and administrators missing. They never knew whether it was because somebody went into hiding or because they had been deported.
Another thing happened at this time. In October, when Hannah was 14 years old, her mother Ruth was pregnant. She was determined not to go to a hospital because there were rumors of people being deported directly from hospitals, so she gave birth at home with a Jewish doctor and Jewish midwife. The baby ended up being stillborn and Hannah’s mother died the next day.
As more and more Jews were deported, Hannah was protected for a while. Her family secured a pair of South American passports, and they were also on the so-called “Palestine list.” The idea was that eventually they would be part of a prisoner swap between the British and the Germans — German soldiers for “exchange Jews” who would be sent to Palestine, which was under the British mandate.
Pick-Goslar survived to have three children, 11 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren. (Eric Sultan/The Lonka Project)
So for a while, Pick-Goslar’s family believed they might be spared. How did she end up at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany?
By the end, the Germans rounded up all the remaining Jews from Amsterdam, including those who had special stamps in their passports. By June 1943, Hannah’s family was in one of the final roundups of Jews in Amsterdam.
First they went to Westerbork, a transit camp in Holland on the border with Germany. It was basically a holding purgatory, and from there people were deported either to Auschwitz or Sobibor — in which they were almost certainly killed — or if they were luckier, to Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen, which were concentration camps but not death camps. Eventually, after several months in Westerbork, Hannah’s family was deported to Bergen-Belsen.
It was bearable in the first few months and they were still fed, though not much. But by February of 1945, the Russians were approaching in the east and the Germans were trying to move people from outer concentration camps into Germany. So Bergen-Belsen swelled to many times its size and became incredibly overcrowded. There was less and less food and water, and typhus started raging through the camp.
How did Pick-Goslar and Frank find each other again at Bergen-Belsen?
Around this time, a tent camp was erected across from Hannah’s part of the camp. People saw other women speaking different languages — Hungarian, Polish, Greek, and eventually Dutch as well. They were emaciated and skeletal.
The Germans forbade going out to talk at the fence and filled it with straw, so that people wouldn’t see each other anymore. But the women found a way to communicate, and word got to Hannah that Anne Frank was on the other side of the fence. Of course, she didn’t believe it, because the Frank family had left the impression that they were in Switzerland. But she decided to go find out for herself, even though it was extremely dangerous — you’d be shot if you went to the fence.
She crept up quietly and said, “Hallo, anybody there?” Then she heard a voice from across the fence, and by chance it was Auguste van Pels, one of the people who was in hiding with Anne’s family. She said almost casually, “Oh, you must be here for Anne,” and she brought Anne from the tent.
What were their last memories together?
Anne was coming from Auschwitz, so she was a broken shadow of her former self. She was freezing, starving and wailing that she was all alone in the world. She assumed that both of her parents were dead at this point. She didn’t know that just a week or two before, her father had been liberated from Auschwitz.
Imagine two girls on opposite sides of this fence — two very loved, coddled girls, who did not know deprivation, but now were completely in the throes of the worst days of the war, completely dehumanized and mistreated. There they were on opposite sides of this fence, best friends, sobbing.
Anne begged Hannah to bring her some food and Hannah said yes immediately, without knowing how she would get it. She said that she would come back in a couple of nights. And there was this amazing moment of female solidarity: The women in her barrack were so moved by the story of this reunion, they wanted to help — so from under a pillow here, hidden in a suitcase there, they gathered the little they had to give and put everything into a sock.
Out went Hannah again, a night or two later, to the fence. When she threw the sock over, she suddenly heard footsteps and then a scream — Anne had just lost the package to a fellow prisoner who took it out of her hands. She was distraught and couldn’t stop crying, but Hannah said, “Just stop crying, I’ll come back again with food.”
So she went back a few days later again with more food collected from her barrack. This time they triangulated better and Anne caught the package. That turned out to be the last time they ever met.
How did Hannah remember the end of the war?
At the very end of the war, the Germans forced everybody who could still walk at Bergen-Belsen onto a couple of different trains. These trains were meant to go to Theresienstadt, where they would be killed.
Hannah was put on a train with her little sister Gabi, whom she was trying to keep alive. It was a harrowing 13-day ride throughout the eastern German countryside. The people were very sick and starving, with no food or water for the journey. There was one especially awful moment when the man next to Hannah tried to spill his bowl of diarrhea outside the door of the train, but instead it splashed all over her.
She was so ill with typhus that she eventually passed out around day 13. When she woke up, people were already off the train. She asked what was going on, and someone said, “Don’t you know? We were liberated by the Russians.”
What did Pick-Goslar make of the tremendous legacy left by Frank’s diary? Did she feel that her friend was correctly understood?
For her, reading the diary was a revelation. She felt like she was sort of reunited with this old friend, which was a very powerful feeling, but also very sad. She saw a girl developing into a young woman whom she would still like to know. She was very grateful that Anne’s diary had been recovered, that so many people got to know her story, and that her diary became a gateway to learning more about the Holocaust.
I think she was a little upset by the sanitized version of Anne Frank. She spoke often about the famous passage in her diary, which is repeated and painted on walls and put on postcards: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Hannah said that if Anne had survived the hell of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, she did not think she would stand by that statement anymore. I think she was concerned about some level of oversimplification.
She was very gratified that Anne’s voice never died and still lives on through her words, but she also wanted people to have a richer and more contextual understanding of the slaughter of millions of people that was the Holocaust.
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New York Teacher Seeking to Unseat Ritchie Torres Calls for Socialism, Removal of All Pro-Israel Politicians
Andre Easton speaks to supporters in New York City. Photo: Screenshot
The race to unseat incumbent US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is drawing attention not only for its electoral implications but also for the broader ideological project outlined by some of his opponents.
Andre Easton, a far-left, anti-Israel high school teacher and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is running as an independent in New York’s 15th Congressional District on a platform that goes beyond defeating the incumbent. In new remarks, Easton suggested that unseating Torres would not, on its own, achieve the political transformation he seeks.
“We understand that this has to be built in the election system, in the election cycle, and outside of the election cycle,” Easton said, describing a strategy that blends electoral participation with grassroots organizing aimed at shifting political and economic power toward the working class. Easton then asserted that the implementation of socialism in the US was necessary to empower the economic downtrodden.
Easton made the comments on Monday night during an event hosted at The People’s Forum in New York City. The event, titled “Palestine: A Test of Democracy,” featured a panel of individuals all donning keffiyehs — a traditional Arab headdress that has been repurposed following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to signify support for the anti-Israel political cause.
Easton also argued that removing elected officials who support Israel would only address “a symptom,” framing his campaign as part of a broader effort to build a socialist system in the United States. He stated that having a few politicians removed for their “complicity in funding and supporting a genocide is a step in the right direction,” appearing to lend support to the false claim that Israel pursued genocide against the Palestinians during its campaign against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.
Torres, one of the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, has consistently backed the US-Israel alliance and condemned rising antisemitism. His positions have made him a prominent voice within the party at a time of growing internal divisions over Middle East policy. Leftists have taken aim at Torres, accusing him of supporting a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
During his remarks this week, Easton claimed that “349 members” of Congress have received “direct funding from Israel,” a characterization that misrepresents how US campaign finance works. Organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are US-based and funded by American donors, though they advocate for strong US-Israel ties and support candidates aligned with that position.
Supporters of Torres argue that such rhetoric suggesting foreign funding risks fueling harmful narratives, particularly amid heightened concerns about antisemitism. They contend that backing for Israel among US lawmakers reflects policy alignment rather than external control.
Easton, for his part, framed his campaign as an effort to mobilize supporters beyond traditional electoral participation. He encouraged individuals to become “active participants” and “active protagonists” in shaping political outcomes, emphasizing sustained engagement outside of election cycles.
Political analysts have noted that campaigns like Easton’s bid often aim to influence the broader ideological landscape even when victory is unlikely. By promoting more expansive policy goals and organizing committed supporters, such efforts can seek to shift the boundaries of mainstream political debate, sometimes referred to as the Overton window.
For Torres and his allies, the race underscores a wider debate within the Democratic Party over foreign policy, economic systems, and the role of activism in electoral politics. While the outcome of the primary remains uncertain, the contest highlights competing visions not just for a congressional seat but for the direction of the party itself.
Another candidate seeking to defeat Torres is Michael Blake, a progressive former New York state assemblyman who is running an insurgent anti-Israel, left-wing campaign.
Efforts to unseat Torres are considered a longshot. Though little recent polling of the race has been publicly released, existing polls show Torres with widespread approval across his district. The 15th district, which contains the heavily Jewish Riverdale suburbs, is expected to reelect Torres, although the Democratic primary is still to be held in June, followed by the general election in November.
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German Intelligence Warns of Rising Iran-Linked Terror Threat
Broken glass and shattered storefront windows mark the façade of an Israeli restaurant in Munich after assailants smashed the windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside during an overnight attack on April 9-10, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
As escalating tensions in the Middle East ripple into Europe, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has raised the alarm over a growing threat from Iran-linked terrorist networks, prompting Jewish communities to heighten security amid fears of targeted attacks.
On Tuesday, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warned of a rising threat level across the country and Europe more broadly from pro-Iranian extremist groups, specifically citing the expanding activities of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya and signaling broader concerns about coordinated operations on the continent.
“What’s new is [the terrorist group’s] warning that they will no longer limit themselves to ‘simple’ attacks but will also include more dangerous means in the long term,” an agency spokesperson told the German newspaper Handelsblatt, pointing to an apparent shift toward more sophisticated and potentially lethal methods, including the use of explosives or weapons.
Since the start of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran earlier this year, European governments have tightened domestic security amid mounting fears that Tehran could activate proxy networks across the continent to retaliate against US, Israeli, and Jewish targets.
But even with increased security and heightened intelligence monitoring, Europe has seen a string of attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli institutions, several of them claimed by the newly emerged Iran-linked terrorist organization.
Just in April, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across the UK, Germany, North Macedonia, Belgium, and the Netherlands, many of them concentrated in London.
Since emerging in early March, the group has taken credit for at least 15 attacks against Jewish and Western targets across Europe.
German intelligence has identified a recurring pattern, with young individuals repeatedly recruited via social media and encrypted platforms to carry out attacks in exchange for modest payments.
German officials suspect the terrorist group may be part of a broader Iraqi Shiite network with ties to Iran’s regional proxy infrastructure, raising concerns about cross-border coordination and external direction.
“The organization uses various channels from the Shiite extremist and pro-Iranian sphere on different social media platforms to report on its activities,” the agency said in a statement.
“The group has also recently stated its political motivation behind its actions and openly threatened Israeli institutions as well as the so-called ‘enemies of Islam’ in Europe,” it continued.
In recent weeks, six sites across Greater London have been targeted, including a Jewish ambulance service and a Persian-language media outlet. In the latest incident on Saturday, an accelerant-filled bottle was hurled through the window of a synagogue in Harrow, on the outskirts of London.
Marc Henrichmann, who chairs the parliamentary oversight committee of Germany’s intelligence services, told Handelsblatt that the surge in incidents is “closely linked to the escalation of the Iran conflict,” warning that the spillover is already being felt across Europe as alarm grows among security experts.
“The threat to Jewish, Israeli, and American institutions remains high, even though they are already under special protection,” Henrichmann said.
“Our objective must be clear: to identify and dismantle these foreign-controlled terrorist networks, and to do so we must significantly strengthen our intelligence capabilities, particularly in the digital domain,” the German official continued.
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Israel Condemns Venice Biennale Jury Decision to Ban Israeli Artist From Winning Top Awards
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a press conference with the Danish Foreign Minister (not pictured) in Jerusalem, Sept. 7, 2025. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix/Ida Marie Odgaard/via REUTERS
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has denounced the International Jury of the 61st Venice Biennale after its five members announced last week that they will not consider awarding top prizes to an artist from Israel.
In a released statement, the Venice Biennale’s jurors said they will exclude from consideration for the Golden and Silver Lion awards artists from “those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” which applies to both Israel and Russia in relation to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, respectively.
Belu-Simion Fainaru is the artist representing Israel at the Venice Biennale this year with his installation “Rose of Nothingness.” Fainaru’s artwork will address topics such as Jewish mysticism, memory, and poetry. The artist – who was born in Bucharest, Romania, and now resides in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa — won the Israel Prize in Design and Interdisciplinary Art last year. A University of Haifa alumnus, he represented Romania at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a post on X that the jury’s decision to “boycott” Fainaru is “a contamination of the art world.”
“The political jury has transformed the Biennale from an open artistic space of free, boundless ideas into a spectacle of false, anti-Israeli political indoctrination,” the ministry added.
Fainaru believes that the jury’s decision has “created a hostile and degrading environment” and that he is being discriminated against based on his national origin, he said in an email last week cited by Artnet.
“The Biennale has publicly stated that it rejects any form of cultural censorship and confirmed participation of all countries recognized by Italy, including Israel, Russia, and Iran,” he added. “I must mention that other states with serious violations are not excluded. This statement is the violation of essential equality condition based on legally unstable and arbitrary basis.”
“Unfortunately, the Biennale may end up being less about the art on display and more about the turbulent world surrounding it,” he also wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. “But we are still making art and believe in dialogue. We look forward to hosting you at our pavilion.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. The Jewish state has strongly denied the allegations, with officials saying the Israeli military has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population. Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas after the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
This year’s Venice Biennale will be open to the public from May 9-Nov. 22, and the awards ceremony will take place in Venice on May 9. The Golden Lion awards are given to the best artist in the main exhibition and to the best national pavilion, and the Silver Lion is awarded to a promising young artist. The winners will be selected among 110 participants.
This is the first year that Russia has been allowed to reopen its pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 2022. The ICC currently has an active arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes against children in Ukraine.
Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, Giovanna Zapperi, and Solange Farkas are the jurors for the Venice Biennale this year. Explaining their decision to exclude Israel and Russia from the event’s top prizes, the jury said they feel “a responsibility towards the historical role of the Biennale as a platform that connects art to the urgencies of its time.”
“We acknowledge the complex relationship between artistic practice and nation-state representation that provides a central structure for the Venice Biennale, particularly the way this relation binds artists’ work with the actions of the state they represent,” they added. The jury also said their decision was inspired by a statement made by the late Koyo Kouoh, who curated the Biennale’s main exhibition this year, titled “In Minor Keys.” Kouoh had said: “In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded.”
Following the statement from the jury, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced that the bloc will withdraw $2.3 million in funding from the international art event for allowing Russia to participate. “While Russia bombs museums, destroys churches, and seeks to erase Ukrainian culture, it should not be allowed to exhibit its own,” Kallas said, as reported by Politico. “Russia’s return to the Venice Biennale is morally wrong, and the EU intends to cut its funding.”
Finland announced last week that its political leaders will not participate in the Venice Biennale this year because of Russia’s participation, and Latvia’s Culture Minister Agnese Lāce said she will boycott the event’s opening on May 9 if Russia is included.