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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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California Police Open Hate Crime Probe After Assailants Attack 2 Jews Overheard Speaking Hebrew
Screenshot from video circulated on social media showing three unknown attackers punch two Israeli-Americans in San Jose, California on March 8, 2026.
Police in San Jose, California have opened a hate crime investigation after two Israeli-American Jews were overheard speaking Hebrew and then assaulted in broad daylight on Sunday.
“After arriving at a restaurant, they [the two Jewish men] were approached by three unknown individuals and punched multiple times, leaving one victim briefly unconscious,” according to a statement posted by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) for the Bay Area. “Both victims were transported to the emergency room and later released.”
JCRC is aware of a disturbing incident at Santana Row in San Jose in which two Israeli Americans were brutally attacked while speaking Hebrew. After arriving at a restaurant, they were approached by three unknown individuals and punched multiple times, leaving one victim briefly… pic.twitter.com/GZ9IkMnxfU
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) March 10, 2026
An additional video from @jewishsf shows a closer vantage point of the assault.
According to one of the victims, one of the suspects uttered “f***ing Jew” while repeatedly beating him to the ground. pic.twitter.com/GClqx6lkRi
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) March 10, 2026
Lior Zeevi, 47, and Daniel Levy, 48, waited for a table outside the Augustine restaurant on Sunday afternoon when the violence began. They told police that the three attackers used antisemitic language as they punched them.
According to one of the victims and local reports, one of the suspects said “f**king Jew” or “f**k the Jews” during the beating.
“Every punch connected directly to where they wanted, to the head directly. It was on purpose to hit and make maximum damage,” one of the victims told ABC7.
Levy lost consciousness briefly after one punch to the head on Sunday. The beating left him with his lower lip split and bleeding. Both men reportedly had swelling on their heads and faces following the attack.
According to ABC7, a witness also heard one of the assailants say, “Don’t mess with Iran,” apparently a reference to the current war in the Middle East.
Keanu Kahrobaie, a retail employee on Santana Row whose parents were born in Iran, filmed one of the videos and said he heard one of the attackers speak in Farsi while fleeing.
“The only logical thing I could think, other than to stop it, because there was way too many people, was to record it, because it could be used as evidence,” Kahrobaie told J. The Jewish News of Northern California. “They actually kind of carried him, then threw him to the ground, and then just continuously hit.’
San Jose’s Mayor Matt Mahan issued a statement condemning the attack.
“I’ve been in touch with Jewish community leaders and our police department regarding this heinous attack, and I will continue to update you as we make progress in our investigation,” he said.
“The attacks on two people speaking Hebrew in San Jose yesterday are reprehensible,” the mayor continued. “Our Jewish community is shocked and angry, and they have every right to be. In recent years in America, violent acts against Jews have nearly tripled and nearly 70 percent of all hate crimes involving religion target Jews.”
Mahan, who is now running for California governor, added that “this is a time to stand with our Jewish neighbors, support their freedoms, their rights, their full inclusion in American society, and it’s time to root out the hate and the ideologies that drive these kinds of violent acts.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office also shared the video on Wednesday and wrote, “This is disgusting. Thank you, San Jose PD, for investigating.”
Marco Sermoneta, consul general of Israel to the Pacific Northwest, commented on the beating on X.
“Two American-Israelis brutally attacked in broad daylight in #SanJose just for speaking Hebrew,” he posted. “I call on California elected officials to condemn this vile, cowardly act and for law enforcement to address this grave incident swiftly and effectively.”
On Wednesday, San Jose police said that detectives at this time “have not located evidence indicating the assault would meet the elements of a hate crime.” However, the attack is currently being investigated as a hate crime as investigators continue to review evidence.
The local Jewish community “is very afraid for our safety following this brutal assault in broad daylight,” Tali Klima, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, told the San Francisco Gate. “Given the ongoing surge in antisemitism in recent years, we expect San Jose police and local officials to take this matter seriously and take proper action to address not only this specific incident but the overall climate of Jew hatred.”
The attack in San Jose follow an ongoing pattern of antisemitic acts targeting Jews and Israelis who are overheard speaking in Hebrew.
Last month, French tourists attacked three Israelis speaking Hebrew at a bar in Thailand, resulting in hospitalization for two to treat injuries that included broken ribs, damaged teeth, and back trauma. The bar’s employees reportedly joined in the assault, hitting the Israelis with batons.
In December, Israeli tourist Almog Armoza had to flee in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu when someone hit him from behind with an iron rod after hearing him recording a voice message in Hebrew. That same month, criminals targeted an Israeli tourist in Cyprus after hearing him speaking Hebrew on his cell phone outside a hotel. The victim’s father wrote on Facebook that “he was brutally beaten, injured in the head and face, and evacuated for medical treatment.”
The prior month, police arrested a 25-year-old Pakistani man who allegedly assaulted an Orthodox Jewish American tourist at Milan’s Central Station.
In July, Ran Ben Shimon, the coach of Israel’s national soccer team, spoke Hebrew with assistant coach Gal Cohen while walking in Athens. This prompted an assault from a man who yelled “Free Palestine.” That same day, a waiter in Vienna refused service to a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians after they confirmed to him that the language he overhead them speaking was Hebrew.
Jewish organizations have begun tracking the prevalence of Hebrew conversations triggering antisemitic incidents. Following the release of a report on antisemitism in Ireland earlier this month, Maurice Cohen, chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland (JRCI), stated that “a recurring feature is hostility triggered solely by Jewish identity or perceived Jewish identity, including visible symbols, the Hebrew language, or accent.”
The researchers looking at Irish incidents found that in 30 percent of cases, the antisemitism only began after some reference to Jewish identity.
Surveys following the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks against southern Israel show that many Jews have begun concealing their Jewish identities when in public.
In February, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International released a survey of Jewish college students revealing that 34 percent made an effort to hide their Judaism to avoid experiencing antisemitism and that 38 percent refrained from voicing support for Israel out of fear of target by anti-Zionist activists.
According to AJC research of the broader Jewish public in March 2025, 56 percent say they changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism and 40 percent said they refrained from wearing or showing items that could identify them as a Jew. The previous year that number was 26 percent.
Much higher numbers of Jews in the United Kingdom report similar sentiments. When the UK’s Campaign Against Antisemitism activist organization polled on the question in November 2023, 69 percent of British Jews said they were less likely to show their Judaism in public. However, by 2025, the Jewish Landscape Report from the Voice of the People initiative reported that number had now risen to 81 percent.
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Hamas Joins Iran in Praising Spain for Hostile Approach to US, Israel
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks at a press conference in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China, Sept. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Xihao Jiang
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has praised Spain for permanently withdrawing its ambassador to Israel on Tuesday, joining Iran in heralding the NATO ally’s hostile posture toward the Jewish state and the US amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“We welcome the decision of the Spanish government to withdraw its ambassador from the ‘Zionist entity’ and to reduce its diplomatic representation. This decision continues the honorable positions taken by the Spanish government against the genocide carried out against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” the Islamist group behind the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel said in a statement.
“While we greatly appreciate this courageous Spanish position, we reiterate our demand that all countries of the world sever all forms of relations with the ‘Zionist entity,’” the statement continued.
Hamas’s comments came after Spain published an announcement in its official gazette that the ambassador’s position had been terminated. Spain’s Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by a charge d’affaires for the foreseeable future.
Israel’s embassy in Spain is also run by a charge d’affaires after the country summoned its ambassador last May in protest of Spain’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, a decision that Jerusalem characterized as a “reward for terrorism.”
Spain’s ambassador to Israel was initially summoned back to Spain in September amid a diplomatic dispute. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of antisemitism, following Madrid’s latest measures against the Jewish state.
Sánchez unveiled new policies at the time targeting Israel over the war in Gaza, including an arms embargo and a ban on certain Israeli goods.
The Spanish government announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Saar announced sanctions against two Spanish ministers, accusing the government in Madrid of antisemitism and of pursuing an escalating anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining the Jewish state on the international stage.
For years, Hamas has received funding, weapons, and training from Iran, which last week expressed support for Spain’s decision to block US forces from using its bases for military operations against the Islamic regime. The move left Madrid as the only major EU country to have explicitly criticized the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
In response to an online news report saying that the Spanish government “denies that the US is using its bases in Spain for the war against Iran,” the Iranian embassy in Spain reshared the headline and added, “Iran fully recognizes and respects this position, which is in accordance with international law.”
While Spain has strongly condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iranian regime targets, other European countries have denounced Iran’s counterstrikes on civilian sites across the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump has lambasted Spain for its stance, even threatening to cut off trade.
“I think they’re not cooperating at all. Spain. I think they’ve been very bad, very bad, not good at all. We may cut off trade with Spain,” Trump told reporters, adding that Madrid has been “very bad to NATO” and does not want to “pay their fair share.”
Spain quickly condemned the strikes against Iran after they began, calling them “dangerous” and “outside of international law.”
Israel accused Spain of “standing with tyrants” for opposing the war.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities started the Gaza war, Spain has been one of Israe’’s fiercest critics on the international stage.
Earlier this month, police raided a steel factory near Bilbao, northern Spain, questioning staff over suspected violations of the country’s arms embargo on Israel
The Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) group, a pro-Israel organization in Spain, described the move as part of a “pattern of political pressure on economic actors for ideological reasons.”
“The combination of state intervention with a political climate that tolerates — and sometimes encourages — aggressive activism against Israel and its partners creates a scenario in which civil liberties and the legal security of companies and citizens are steadily eroded,” ACOM said in a statement.
In September, the Spanish government passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
That same month, when Spain recalled its ambassador to Israel, Sánchez accused the Jewish state of “exterminating defenseless people” in Gaza and “breaking all the rules of humanitarian law.”
Sánchez’s administration expanded the boycotted products to ban imports from Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
While pursuing such policies and attacking Israel verbally, Sánchez has facing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
Amid a sharp rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and anti-Israel sentiment, Lorenzo Rodríguez, mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos in northern Spain, accused the country’s leader in September of “fueling a discourse of hatred” against Israel and the Jewish people.
“The government is fostering antisemitism that will prove deeply damaging for Spain,” Rodríguez said in an interview with the local outlet El Español.
Comparing Spain’s attitude toward Israel with other countries, Sa’ar stated earlier this month that “the obsessive activism of the current Spanish government against Israel stands out in light of its ties with dark, tyrannical regimes — from Iran’s ayatollahs to [Nicolás] Maduro’s government in Venezuela.”
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How a Jewish-owned yarn store knitted the symbol of the anti-ICE movement
In January, as violent confrontations between ICE and protesters erupted in the Twin Cities, a knitting group at Needle & Skein yarn shop in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, started brainstorming what they could do to lift people’s spirits. Paul Neary, a designer at the shop with a special love for fiber arts history, quickly found inspiration: a pointed red knit hat with a tassel worn in 1940s Norway to protest the Nazi occupation and boost morale.
“He showed me the picture of the Norwegian resistance hat and I said that is exactly it,” store owner Gilah Mashaal told me.
Although it’s unclear why the red hats became such a popular anti-Nazi tool in Norway, some have noted the link between their design and the Phrygian cap, a symbol of freedom during the French and American revolutions. Neary reverse engineered the Norwegian pattern, creating a more modern beanie-like shape, birthing the “Melt the ICE” hats now seen at anti-ICE protests across the country. Although, as a Guardian article noted, Mashaal had a rule that “nobody talks politics” in the store, she felt stirred to action.
“It kind of transcends politics, in my opinion,” Mashaal said. “When your neighbors are afraid to leave their homes, or they’re afraid to take their sick children to the doctor, or they can’t go to work, something’s wrong with our society.”
The situation feels personal for Mashaal. Her paternal grandparents were from Baghdad and were forced to leave during the 1941 Farhud, a violent attack on Jews similar to the pogroms of Europe. Mashaal’s family settled in Cairo, but that proved to be only a temporary solution.
“When my father was 14 years old, the king was deposed so the military took over and things became very very difficult for the Jews in Cairo,” said Mashaal. Her father escaped to France and eventually immigrated to the United States. “They were forced to leave with absolutely nothing and my father told me the story of my grandmother breaking all the dishes in the house because she didn’t want to just hand it over to the military.”
Mashaal said she’s reminded of the terrible conditions her family had to endure when she sees what is happening in her community.
“This is about human decency,” she said. “This is about caring for your neighbor.”
After Neary came up with the pattern, they planned a knit-along for the following week.
“I thought we were gonna have like, you know, maybe 10 people show up,” Mashaal said. “Then all of a sudden there were more than a hundred people in my store.”
The pattern went viral online when the shop shared Neary’s pattern on Ravelry, a site where knitters and crocheters share patterns, projects and tips. When this article was written, 12,251 users reported they were making or had made the hats and 4,446 had put it in their queue of future projects. The design also inspired a number of customized spin-offs including a version that incorporated “Love is more powerful than hate” in morse code and a mini hat that could be worn as a brooch. Mashaal said that the communal values of the knitting world helped make the hats a success.
“They’re very politically minded,” she said. “And when they see something happening that needs attention, everybody comes together and works towards this common goal.”
When we spoke, Neary couldn’t resist a pun, telling me political activism in the yarn community is “literally knit into the fabric of our history.” Knitters in Belgium encoded messages about military activity in their stitches during World War I. Knitting circles have served as a place where women, who were discouraged from being political in public, could exchange ideas about issues such as slavery and women’s suffrage.
“When you see things happening and you feel helpless, you try to find some way to connect to other people who are also feeling helpless,” Mashaal said. “To create something with your hands is soothing, in a way, and very meaningful.”
Profits from the hats are donated to immigrant aid groups in Minnesota, such as the Immigrant Rapid Relief Fund. Mashaal said they have also received donations from around the world and have raised $760,000 thus far.
Not everyone is happy with Needle & Skein’s new hats. Both Mashaal and Neary told me they’ve received hateful emails, phone calls and letters from people who disagree with their message. But Mashaal said “the positivity far outweighs the negativity that we’ve gotten.”
Neary noted that they have received supportive calls from people who may not necessarily have been as politically engaged before.
“They’ll say something like, you know, ‘Usually I don’t get involved in stuff like this, but this really moved me,’” Neary said. “It’s their kind of gentle way of letting us know, like, ‘We maybe didn’t vote the same way, but obviously we’re on the same team.’”
Mashaal and Neary noted how the knitting community’s diversity connects people across racial, ethnic, gender and generational boundaries.
“It truly does give us all kind of a space to have together to learn more about different people and share comfortably,” Neary said.
“We just all have this one passion. And so we find that one literal common thread.”
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