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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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Cycling team Israel–Premier Tech is ditching the ‘Israel’ brand. But was it entirely their decision?
After a tumultuous season, international cycling team Israel–Premier Tech, co-owned by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, is officially going to change its name and remove the word “Israel”. The decision comes after repeated anti-Israel protests across Europe disrupted the team—whose international roster of 31 cyclists includes just three Israelis—during their open-road events, which can last hundreds of kilometres across the continent. Several cyclists crashed due to protester intervention. The decision to remove Israeli branding from Israel–Premier Tech led co-owner Adams to announce he would step away from day-to-day involvement with the team.
There’s a lot to be said about the political ramifications of wearing the Israeli name on your shirt in 2025, but our sports podcasters have a different theory about the shift. Israel–Premier Tech enjoyed a successful season that brought them back to full status with the UCI World Tour, after being relegated down to the secondary UCI ProSeries since 2023. That means the stakes are higher, the stage is bigger, and the league’s propensity for risk and disruption may well have shrunk. Is this purely a political decision, or are UCI executives trying to prevent more bad press in the coming year?
Also on the docket: the boys talk about the Toronto Blue Jays’ run to the American League championship series, big baseball moves, early NHL impressions and a quick NFL check-in.
Transcript (excerpt)
James Hirsh: We want to talk about a recent story. There’s been some news with a cycling team, Israel Premier Tech, which is owned by Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams. And it’s not going to be Israel Premier Tech anymore.
Gabe Pulver: They’ve been called Israel Premier Tech for, I guess it’s been around five years. They’ve been an official UCI squad, you know, for the last, I think, since 2020—
James Hirsh: Which means they compete in the big cycling races like the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, things like that.
Gabe Pulver: Exactly. They were called Israel Start-Up Nation for a number of years and Israel Cycling Academy before that. They were a part of the Vuelta a España that had to be shut down due to anti-Israel protests going on across Spain. And for a while, they took the name off the jersey and just called themselves Premier Tech for the week. That seemed to not assuage the protesters, and they’ve decided to, as a quote, “move away from its current Israeli identity”.
James Hirsh: And part of that is Sylvan Adams, we should say, who has a pretty big job right now as president of the World Jewish Congress, has said that he can’t continue to be part of the team that’s not putting Israel in the name. It seems like they acquiesced to demands, I think, based on his statement.
Gabe Pulver: So what’s interesting is that Premier Tech is a Canadian company. They’re, you know, a Quebecois tech company, and Premier Tech and its president own a chunk of it. A good chunk of the riders are Canadian and previously have been pretty supportive of the team’s Israeli identity. Another interesting part of this is that Sylvan Adams is sort of, like you said, busy with his other job, but you wonder what the future of the team holds given that, you know, sort of the face of their team and, you know, a huge part of their Canadian connection is no longer going to be day-to-day running things, you know, with their identity. Sylvan Adams is a pretty proud guy, and as their identity changes and he steps back, you wonder if he’ll continue to support the team financially as much as he has.
James Hirsh: Yeah, I think it’s very interesting to see this. This is sort of a test case for Israel’s continued involvement in certain international sports or sports that have an international component. We’ll see if that will change. Obviously, there’s been great news today about the peace deal being signed. And if anyone is getting that news on that from a Jewish sports podcast, you’ve got to tune in a little bit more.
Gabe Pulver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Check out, close this and go to CNN and see what’s happening with that.
James Hirsh: But look, there have been calls for Israel to be removed from FIFA. We’ve talked about that. There have been calls for Israel to be excluded from other international sporting events. There have been on-the-ground protests that we’ve covered, you know, including at lower-tier sporting events. We’ll see what will come. This certainly seems like the first step of an Israeli team removing—continuing to be owned by an Israeli, is affiliated with Israeli coaches, owned by Israeli teams, all Israeli people, all that. But no longer having Israel in the name is not just a symbolic gesture.
Gabe Pulver: No. And I have a theory. It’s not a very charitable theory, but Israel Premier Tech had sort of been relegated to semi-conditional status on the World Tour this year. They had riders at a bunch of events, but they weren’t at every single event. They weren’t full Tour members. Next year, they have regained their position back in full Tour members. And after the disaster where virtually every rider on Tour was furious about all of the protesters in the Vuelta, I think they’re choosing to decide, I think they’re choosing to say we’re not going to have this shit anymore.
Like they’re going to get rid of Israel, the name, when you’re back on the Tour. Because we didn’t like the news, we didn’t like the coverage, we didn’t like the protests. You know, you can stay involved, the Israeli money. Obviously, they’ll take the Israeli money, they’ll support the Israeli riders. However, they’re very unlikely—they just don’t want the name Israel to be running around on the Tour so more people can show up and disrupt the Tour de France, which would be an enormous disaster for the sport. Maybe there are enough Jews in France and enough harmony in the international community in France that that won’t be a problem. I doubt it. But I think it’s probably a self-preservation move by the UCI before something a little bit bigger than the Vuelta a España has to get cancelled.
James Hirsh: Yeah, that makes total sense. And if there’s one thing, I don’t know much about the cycling federations and whoever runs that, but there’s one thing I know about European technocrats who run sporting organizations is that they’re all cowards and will always do the easiest thing in the goal of self-preservation.
Gabe Pulver: Yeah, self-preservation.
James Hirsh: They are about cycling, but I believe it, no matter what.
Gabe Pulver: No, they are all there. The show must go on in any possible way.
James Hirsh: Yeah.
Gabe Pulver: You know, I think if a single rider was to ever say something political, they would literally, you know, deflate their tires, like to, you know, steal a metaphor.
James Hirsh: Yeah. So when countries like Spain decide to, you know, continue their millennia-old tradition of anti-Semitism and protesters start protesting Israeli teams and non-Israeli riders at cycling events that they don’t care about in the first place—
Gabe Pulver: Yeah.
James Hirsh: —You can bet that whoever’s in charge of that cycling event is going to cave to those protesters. Absolutely.
Show Notes
Credits
- Hosts: James Hirsh and Gabe Pulver
- Producer: Michael Fraiman
- Music: Coby Lipovitch (intro), chēēZ π (main theme, “Organ Grinder Swing“)
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The answered prayers of Trump’s artful ceasefire deal
On Yom Kippur, millions of Jews around the world prayed for the release of the hostages. A week later, those prayers are on the verge of being answered
President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday evening that Hamas and Israel have accepted the first phase of his peace deal — including the release of all the living hostages at once, likely this weekend, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners — is as shocking as it is wonderful.
Just over two years since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, killing almost 1,200 people and abducting 251, there has been scant good news. As the death toll mounted on both sides, we’ve had little reason to expect anything except for more bloodshed, more vengeance and more destruction.
“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives,” the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said — and Trump saw that Israel and Hamas were both exhausted, with no alternatives.
Israel faced mounting domestic unrest, a steep decline in international support as its allies lined up to back a Palestinian state, cultural and diplomatic isolation, and a war-weary military.
Hamas lost every battle but the one it started on Oct. 7, and found itself cornered in Gaza City without the weapons lifeline of Iran and the cash infusions from Qatar. Hamas had also lost popular support. After Oct. 7, 71% of Palestinians said they supported the attack. In a May 2025 poll, that number was 51%. Support for Hamas among all Palestinians has dropped to 32% from 43% in Dec. 2023.
The outline of the current deal is similar to one President Joe Biden offered a year ago. What’s different: Trump understood that both parties were at the end of the road, and used that knowledge wisely.
He increased American leverage over Hamas by bringing Qatar closer than ever into the United States’ embrace. Skeptics said that part of that closeness came from the economic ties between Qatar and the Trump family and its associates. If that’s what brings the hostages home, I’m frankly not sure I care.
At the same time, Trump finally stood up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to news reports, he lost his temper with Netanyahu following Israel’s September assassination attempt against Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. That shocking expansion of the war threatened the Abraham Accords, the singular diplomatic achievement of Trump’s first term, as well as direct U.S. interests: Qatar hosts the largest American air base in the Middle East.
The first clue that Trump’s deal might really come through, after so many failed efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire, was that Trump successfully forced Netanyahu to make a personal apology to Qatar last week — something almost unprecedented in Middle East diplomacy. He then extended the promise of a NATO-like American defense shield to Qatar, also unprecedented.
All that maneuvering has led to an agreement that, if it holds, will be a stunning victory against extremism.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have reaped the fruits of violent resistance. Could they be more rotten and bitter?
Far-right Israeli leaders and their supporters who fantasized about re-occupying Gaza — which would’ve been almost inconceivable without consigning the remaining hostages to death — will not get their way. “I said ‘Israel cannot fight the world Bibi, they can’t fight the world,’” Trump said.
And the longer term implications of Trump’s plan provide a pathway to peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, which would almost certainly deprive those same Israelis and their supporters of dominion over the West Bank and the almost 2 million Palestinians who live there.
The deal is a blow to extremists outside the region as well — those online social media warriors who have been trashing the deal, eager to fight the Zionist entity into nonexistence. The prospect of peace and coexistence must be a huge disappointment for them.
“Let it be known that Western leftists who oppose the ceasefire plan in Gaza are now more radical and rigged than Hamas itself,” wrote Palestinian activist Khalil Sayegh last week, “Hamas sounds reasonable compared to the keyboard warriors in the West.”
For the rest of us, the deal is a giant leap in the right direction.
In January, when Trump oversaw a deal to release 33 hostages with the same promise of a long-term Israeli Palestinian accord, I wrote that if it came to pass, I would be the first in line to hang the Nobel medal around his neck. I still think he is a clear and present danger to democracy in the U.S. and to the well-being of the most vulnerable Americans, as the current government shutdown makes clear.
But credit where credit is due. This is an artful deal, one that returns hope to a region where it had all but disappeared.
That last deal fell apart when Netanyahu refused to enter the second phase of negotiations. This one has more of the necessary threats and benefits behind it to keep all the parties in line. Here’s praying it holds — for the hostages, for Israelis and Palestinians, and for the world.
The post The answered prayers of Trump’s artful ceasefire deal appeared first on The Forward.
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Deal to release ‘ALL of the hostages’ from Gaza has been struck, Trump announces
Dozens of Israeli hostages held for two years in Gaza, including 20 who remain alive, are set to be released imminently following an agreement between Israel and Hamas that could lead to a permanent ceasefire.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the deal on Wednesday evening, saying that both sides had signed off on a “first phase” of the peace proposal he unveiled last week. The agreement came a day after the second anniversary of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel, when the group that has controlled Gaza took about 250 hostages. Of them, 48 remain.
“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace. All Parties will be treated fairly!” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen. BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the agreement in a post on X. “With the approval of the first phase of the plan, all our hostages will be brought home. This is a diplomatic success and a national and moral victory for the State of Israel,” he wrote.
Soon, social media began to fill with footage of celebrations. In Israel, hostage families who have battled for their loved ones’ return could be seen dancing in jubilation and the hostages freed in past ceasefires posted videos of themselves weeping as they addressed the men they were forced to leave behind. In Gaza, Palestinians who have endured two years of deadly bombing, pressing hunger and mass displacement expressed hope that the pressing dangers they face could soon recede.
Einav Zangauker, Michel Iluz, Hagai and Anat Angrest, and Ayelet Samerano– all parents of hostages– in a huge group hug at Hostages Square. They fought like lions. pic.twitter.com/yotiYggzDC
— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي (@NTarnopolsky) October 9, 2025
An exact timeline for the hostage release was not immediately clear, but Israeli media reported that urgent preparations were underway with the expectation that hostages could come home by the weekend — ahead of the Simchat Torah holiday that marks the two-year anniversary of the attack in the Jewish calendar. Family members abroad were being flown to Israel and hospitals were being prepared to receive 20 men who have experienced two years of brutality and hunger.
Special attention was being paid, Israeli media reported, to the families whose loved ones would not immediately return — while Hamas committed to returning the bodies of deceased hostages, it has reportedly not yet located all of them and there is a widespread expectation that some may never be found.
U.S. Jewish groups as well as Israeli hostage advocacy groups welcomed the announcement in press releases and videos that expressed appreciation for Trump’s aggressive efforts to press for a deal. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined the Gaza talks earlier on Wednesday, in a sign that an agreement was potentially imminent.
The exact terms of the deal were still emerging on Wednesday evening but Israeli media was reporting that Israel would retain control of a majority of Gaza until the last hostage is released and that Israeli would not be required to release from its prisons anyone involved in the Oct. 7 attack.
Many elements of Trump’s peace proposal, including demands that Hamas disarm and that a postwar governance structure be established, are expected to be negotiated after the first phase. Israel ended the last ceasefire, in February, rather than continue negotiating. But Trump has indicated that he plans to maintain pressure on both sides to extend their truce into a permanent peace.
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