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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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‘America Last’: Report Reveals Suspicious Foreign Support Amplifying Nick Fuentes Online
Nick Fuentes during an interview in December 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Amid ongoing debates about the rise of antisemitic voices on the US political right, recent investigations into social media activity suggest the potential involvement of inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
On Monday, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released new research showing the techniques used by overseas operatives to promote the authoritarian ideologies of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
Titled “America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,” the 23-page report dissects how the 27-year-old influencer “consistently amasses far more retweets than any comparable figure, including Elon Musk, despite having a fraction (<1%) of the follower count.”
The report was co-drafted with the support of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab. Previous research collaborations between NCRI and Rutgers have also explored how far-right influencers hijacked the religious phrase “Christ is King” to advance their ideology and how Tik-Tok content promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s international objectives.
The researchers reviewed Fuentes and compared him with other prominent accounts. They discovered that “within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.” The report explains that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
The accounts are characterized as entirely anonymous and seemingly single-purpose for promoting Fuentes.
While Fuentes has grown most well-known for his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and pre-Vatican II, Catholic-reactionary antisemitism, the report highlights the podcaster’s endorsements of terrorism and enthusiasm for sexual violence. He has stated that he seeks a 16-year-old wife, desiring an underage woman “when the milk is fresh.” This aligns with his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation which has now seen the return of child marriage. Fuentes also claims that rape within marriage is impossible, since he believes that a wife’s body belongs to her husband.
Fuentes also “praised Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, expressed support for China taking Taiwan, and described the Taliban’s victory over US forces as a positive development.”
The researchers in their analysis seek not to explain Fuentes’s views but rather to “assess how synthetic engagement, real-world events, and media incentives converged to elevate a fringe figure into a central subject of national attention.”
Looking into Fuentes’s history and disclosures from former insiders within his organization support the suggestion of artificial engagement.
“Additional evidence shows that Fuentes has a prior history of coordinated digital manipulation. In 2022, two former associates described internal group chats where Fuentes directed interns and loyalists to carry out online tasks on his behalf, and a former technical aide alleged that viewer counts on his streaming platform were artificially inflated using a built-in multiplier,” the report states.
The researchers explain that “Fuentes did not deny the inflation itself. These documented practices demonstrate a willingness to orchestrate controlled teams and manipulate digital metrics — behavior entirely consistent with the coordinated amplification patterns observed on X.”
The report features images of “America First” Fuentes appearing on different foreign TV networks including the Iranian regime’s Press TV and Russia Today (RT). On the former he sided with Iran during an American attack in support of Israel, and on the latter, he claimed that support for Ukraine was based on “Russophobia.” He also reportedly stated that he would “fight on the side of China against America.”
Another picture shows Fuentes in 2022 at the America First Political Action Conference, where he stated in his introduction to US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying he’s Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing. Can we get a round of applause for Russia?”
The analysts describe how “Fuentes’s defense of authoritarian adversaries — Russia, Iran, China — is not a minor contradiction. It represents a coherent pattern in which his anti-American worldview aligns more closely with America’s enemies than with its interests. His self-proclaimed patriotism crumbles in the face of performative contrarianism, where any regime that resists liberal democracy becomes, in his eyes, preferable to the current United States.”
According to NCRI, the Russian and Iranian media’s approval of Fuentes “underscores the broader point: the figure elevated by algorithmic manipulation and mainstream media grooming as a voice of nationalist revival is, in reality, one of the most reliable public defenders of America’s geopolitical foes.”
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Israel Restores Relations With Bolivia, Signs Free Trade Deal With Costa Rica as Latin American Ties Strengthen
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar (left) and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo (right) sign a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC on Dec. 9, 2025, formally restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot
Israel is further expanding its diplomatic and economic presence in Latin America, formally restoring relations with Bolivia and signing a free trade agreement with Costa Rica as the Isaac Accords begin to take shape.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo signed a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC, formally restoring diplomatic relations between their countries after two years of severed relations amid the war in Gaza.
“Today, we are ending the long, unnecessary chapter of separation between our two nations,” the top Israeli diplomat said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“Following the election of [Bolivian] President Rodrigo Paz, I am pleased to announce that Israel and Bolivia are renewing diplomatic relations,” he continued.
Israel and Bolivia: We renewed our diplomatic relations!
We’re continuing to work. pic.twitter.com/oUtcXyyaHa— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) December 10, 2025
During their meeting, both leaders committed to fully restoring diplomatic relations, appointing ambassadors, and fostering collaboration between government and private-sector representatives.
They also pledged ongoing dialogue and broader cooperation in areas including agriculture, security, health, innovation, and their shared fight against organized crime and narco-terrorism.
“Bolivia, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel share a long history of true friendship,” Saar said during his speech. “Bolivia opened its doors to Jewish refugees during the Second World War when much of the world closed its gates.”
“Bolivia supported the establishment of the State of Israel in the historic 1947 UN vote,” he continued. “For many decades, our two nations enjoyed warm diplomatic relations. The renewal of our ties is an important and welcome step.”
Bolivia has also announced it will lift visa requirements for Israelis entering the country, a move the top Israeli diplomat praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last week, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across Latin America, with the new effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as the framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
On Monday, Israel and Costa Rica signed a free trade agreement covering goods, services, and investments, advancing their bilateral relations during Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Trade Manuel Tovar Rivera’s visit to Jerusalem.
Rivera also announced that Costa Rica will open an office for trade and investment innovation in Jerusalem next year.
The newly signed agreement will eliminate over 90 percent of tariffs, providing broad access for Israeli industrial and agricultural products to the Costa Rican market, while also reducing import costs on a wide range of goods, from food and medical equipment to industrial tools.
“This agreement opens significant new avenues for both Costa Rica and Israel,” Rivera said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“It enhances access to high-quality Costa Rican goods and services while creating a mutually beneficial platform for collaboration in high-technology industries, premium agribusiness and specialized services,” he continued.
Building on the renewed momentum in diplomatic engagement across Latin America, Israel is expanding and strengthening its bilateral relations with several countries in the region.
Argentina announced plans to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year as the two countries continue to deepen their ties.
Last week, Ecuador opened an additional diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, a move that Saar hailed as a “milestone” in strengthening their bilateral relations.
Paraguay, Guatemala, and Honduras, all of which have previously relocated their embassies to Jerusalem, have reaffirmed their support for Israel and signaled intentions to deepen future cooperation.
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What happens when you’re the only Jewish family in Oklahoma?
When her mother Clara dies suddenly of a stroke, Emily is left with her ashes and a note to scatter them on Sylvia’s farm in Chandler, Oklahoma. There’s a problem: Emily has no idea who Sylvia is and has never been to Oklahoma before in her life — and as far as she knows, neither had her mom.
Oklahoma Samovar, a new play opening at La MaMa’s Downstairs Theater, starts at the end of Emily’s trip to find Sylvia, who turns out to be an old woman with a bit of a memory issue and the sister of Emily’s grandmother Rose. When Emily asks why her mother would want her ashes left on the farm, Sylvia launches into their family history. She goes all the way back to 1887, when Emily’s great-grandparents Jake and Hattie fled persecution in Latvia with nothing but a feather bed and a samovar, and unfolds the stories of each generation over the play’s acts.
While most immigration stories usually focus on big cities, Oklahoma Samovar explores the little-known history of Jews in the Midwest in a deeply-human way. It is a tender portrayal of an immigrant family struggling to survive and figuring out their identity over multiple generations. Instead of villanizing or lionizing its characters, Oklahoma Samovar presents people with all their complexities, allowing them moments of moral failing while portraying them with empathy.
A fictional drama based on her own family history, playwright Alice Eve Cohen considers the play her “foundational work.”
“I’ve truly been working on Oklahoma Samovar since the day I met my Aunt Sylvia,” she said. “I met her in 1987. And I was so enthralled and inspired by her stories that I started writing about it probably the next day.”
After putting on a workshop production of the play in 2007, Cohen shelved Oklahoma Samovar to focus on other projects, including authoring two memoirs, writing several other plays, and teaching playwriting and creative writing at The New School. Over a decade later, she returned to working on Oklahoma Samovar and submitted it to the National Jewish Playwriting Contest, where it won in 2021.
“My very first draft of this play was almost verbatim documentation of the stories that Sylvia told me,” Cohen said. “It was very romantic. It was very fanciful. It was almost all positive, and there was no conflict.”
While some elements of the original play remain — such as the use of puppetry, which depicts long boat voyages and dream sequences — the new iteration is not an idealized version of the American Dream. Its characters are complex and flawed to the point that Jake kills someone trying to secure a home for his family during the Oklahoma Land Runs.
“I knew that I had incomplete stories,” Cohen said about the original conversation that inspired the play’s events.
“I’ve done research into the Oklahoma Land Run, which Sylvia described in the most romantic way,” Cohen went on. “In fact, the land run was a violent land grab, it was a theft of land from the Native Americans who had been forced to relocate to what was then called Indian territory.” Cohen explained. “I took this kernel of the story that Sylvia remembered from her childhood, her dad saying, ‘I lost my thumb, but I kept the farm,’ and I realized there was a shootout.”
Although Cohen’s exact version of events is imagined, the harsh depiction of the Land Runs encapsulates the brutality of the immigrant experience and the family’s desperate actions in pursuit of starting their lives in America.
Immigrants also had to choose between assimilating and preserving tradition, a conflict that is exacerbated for Hattie and Jake when they settle in Chandler, an Oklahoma town with virtually no Jewish community. Hattie struggles to connect with her new environment, concerned about the lack of a rabbi and a minyan, but Jake wholeheartedly embraces a new, goyish American cowboy persona. He even adopts a signature catchphrase: “Hot Diggety Damn!”
This struggle with identity follows their oldest daughter Rose into adulthood. Having grown up learning the Bible at Chandler’s Presbyterian Sunday School, Rose is unprepared for the level of Orthodoxy her new mother-in-law expects of her. A Russian immigrant who believes Rose’s lifestyle amounts to heresy, Mrs. Giventer spends her days dismissing Rose as a convert and poor excuse for a wife.
Cohen says these characters serve as a reflection of the diverse experiences in the Jewish diaspora. “They all practice Judaism in different ways. They’ve assimilated in different ways,” Cohen said. “They’ve either held on to their original accents and their original Yiddish language, or they have intentionally spurned them and Americanized as quickly and as completely as they can.”
“When family members from these different traditions and different positions in the spectrum of American Judaism meet, it isn’t always easy,” Cohen said. “There are often huge clashes.”
Even though virtually all the characters of Oklahoma Samovar are Jewish, Cohen does not imagine Jews to be her only audience.
“I think there are universal themes that relate to immigration and assimilation that anybody of any culture can relate to,” Cohen said. “While the play is set in Oklahoma and in New York and in Latvia, I think its stories transcend geographic boundaries.”
And perhaps it will inspire others to find the complicated truths that lie in the sweet family stories they’ve always heard.
Oklahoma Samovar is playing at LaMaMa’s Downstairs Theater through December 21st.
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