The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank [Hardcover]

Willy Lindwer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 1991

First published 1991 by Pantheon Books this book contains six powerful, harrowing and fascinating interviews with women who knew Anne Frank in the final seven months of her life. Her life did not end with the last words in her diary, it ended alone on a filthy floor at Bergen-Belsen

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Given the extraordinary popularity of Anne Frank's Diary , notes Dutch filmmaker Lindwer, it was "inevitable" that her account would be romanticized; indeed, Anne Frank is especially remembered for having nobly affirmed, during her persecution, that she believed people were good at heart. But, Lindwer adds, "arrest, deportation, and annihilation are the final unwritten chapters of Anne's diary." As if to complete our understanding of what she and her fellow victims endured, Lindwer interviewed six women who were interned in concentration camps with Anne Frank (these interviews formed the basis for Lindwer's internationally aired television documentary of the same name). These six survived perhaps because they were older, stronger or simply luckier than Frank, and their accounts provide horrifying glimpses of camp life and death. Among the saddest images is that of a reunion, across a barbed-wire fence in Bergen-Belsen, of Anne and the friend referred to in the Diary as Lies, during which a "broken" Anne (incorrectly) announces,"I don't have any parents anymore." These testimonies would be unbearable if they did not also give voice to the courage and dignity of the six witnesses throughout their own suffering. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-- Lindwer presents the transcripts of six in-depth interviews conducted in preparation for his film documentary, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank . Although "Lies Goosens," real name Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Goslar, will be the most familiar to readers of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl , each of these women's first-person accounts is compelling. They relate their backgrounds, their capture, details of the concentration camp experience, and descriptions of the time immediately following liberation. Each includes her relationship to Anne Frank and gives impressions of the girl's final days. This collage of intimate recollections paints a clear picture of the human experience known as the Holocaust. Few will be able to digest this book in one sitting; fewer still will be able to turn away from it once they've begun. --Barbara Hawkins, West Potomac High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (April 23, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679401458
• ISBN-13: 978-0679401452
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,534,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars These women are the definition of courage, April 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (Paperback)

This is one of the best books I have ever read. A must read for all ages. These ladies are some of the most courageous people in the world. They perserved knowing that their demise could be any day. But living was too important to them so they dug deep within themselves to keep their spirit alive and they succeeded. Hooray for them!!! Miep Gies is also a very courageous person. She is right up there with these ladies. "Anne Frank Remembered" by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold is also a wonderful book. If you are looking for excellent reading and a time frame for the life of Anne Frank, then by all means read this book. I don't know if I could handle the pressures that these ladies went through to live, and I hope that I never have to endure their suffering, but if I do, I will take these 7 women with me and draw on their strengths and spirit to keep me alive.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable Testimony for a Revered Legend, February 14, 2005

By 

R. Chaffey "beckahi" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (Paperback)

"The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" by Willy Lindwer was originally a documentary. The author and filmmaker's encounter with the women who knew Anne Frank, after her family was captured, left him with more material than could ever be told in a documentary. It is collected here in this powerful and necessary testament to the legacy of Anne Frank.

The book begins with a slight overview of Anne Frank's life. It then gives way to the stories of six women who knew her - some before her deportation to the camps, and all of them during her final days at Bergen-Belsen. The collection begins with the reminiscences of Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Goslar, Anne's childhood friend (who she wrote about in her diary), who later threw her Red Cross packages across the barbed-wire fence of the camp when they miraculously encountered one another again. The stories the women have to tell are similar - their treatment in the camp, the way they met Anne and Margot - and all of them were inexplicably touched by her life. Some felt an overwhelming sense of failure at not being able to do more to help these poor sisters, but there was little they could do, especially when both were fighting typhus and had little will, or strength, to survive. At least one even made comment that had Anne known her father was still alive, she might have fought a little harder to see her beloved Pip once more. Anne was the 'apple of her father's eye' and his life after the liberation of Auschwitz was to let her words bear testimony for her.

These women all have powerful and miraculous stories to tell. The fact that they survived the death camp is a miracle in itself. One of the women's husband survived Auschwitz with Otto Frank and many of them had the privilege of meeting him after the war; and one had the sad 'honor' of confirming Anne and Margot's deaths. Perhaps the story of Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder is the most compelling for her witness to not only the girls' final days, but to their deaths as well. Both the Frank girls died of
typhus a few short weeks before the liberation of the camps. "The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" is a crucial examination of an amazing life cut short by unimaginable cruelty, and to the miracle of those who survived to tell it in their own words.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steven Speilberg: here's a perfect movie for you, June 12, 2000

By 

Randy Berkman (san diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (Paperback)

It's been a few years since I read this book. However, I recently watched the video interviews (Anne Frank Remembered) of the same concentration camp survivors that the author quoted in this heart-wrenching book. This book adds information not before known and is worth reading by anyone who is curious about what life was like for Anne Frank and her family after the diary. Along with Ernst Schnabel's book Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, it could form the basis of a great movie which for the first time would show what happened to Anne Frank post-Diary. (written on June 12, AF's birthday)