Customer Reviews

The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

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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.

"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.

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)

"How can I find tranquility?
Years later, the tumult of the men resounds,
The swishing of their whips,
Above the people being pushed along,
And stamping of boots,
Cries of anguish.
I have seen so many go to a desperate death,
Across a dirt path, on which their weakened feet
Dragged them to the gate
Smoke cannot speak,
From the chimneys they slip out, formless above my head,
And are taken by the wind,
Robbed of their bones.
Since then, despite my clothes, I am naked.
And remain exposed to synonyms.
Therefore it is not tranquil within,
The whips are still lashing,
And at the most unexpected times,
The packing paper pictures come forth,
Chilly, yellowed, gray from smoke,
And stiff with death at night when I want to sleep."
Ronnie Goldstein- van Cleef,

This novel was an eye opener for me of the Holocaust and all that the Jewish people were made to bear. Death looked them all in the eye, and from day to day, no one knew if they would see another day. They were humiliated and dragged down, stripped of their self-esteem and their strength as never before in their lives. Husbands were separated from wives, and some children from their parents. Many got sick and died before reaching the gas chambers. Many looked already dead in skeletal form breathing their last breaths.
I applaud the six women who gave interviews from this book. These women saw Anne Frank and her family and sought to help them any way they could. These were brave women, who endured the suffering of the death camps and came out alive. Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Gosslar, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, Bloeme Evers-Emden, Lenie de Jong-van-Naarden, Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef, we thank you for sharing this horrible time of your life. It must have been very hard to relive, so thank you. Thank you so much for your courageousness.
Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 07/03/07)

When I finished reading the diary on Anne Frank I needed to know more about the rest of her life. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank are stories of women who knew Anne in the concentration camp. It is more about other womens stories than Annes but sometimes includes a bit about her expieriences.

Anne Frank's name is one of the most known names in the world. She stuned the world with her diary. But there were still so many unanswered questions about what happend after they were betrayed? Everyone knew that she died at a consintration camp, but what did she die of and so many other questions ligered in the minds of the millions of people who have read her diary. Finally Willy Lindwer took up the challenge of finding out what happend in the last 7 monthes of her life. I recomend this book to anyone and everyone, but I recomend reading her diary first. This book picks up where her diary left off and continues to the day that she died.This book is told by the women who knew Anne Frank and her family at the concentration camp and not only tell what they know happend to her, but their story as well. It is truly and amazing book and a must read!

I had great hopes for this book, however, there is very little information on Anne, herself. While the suvivor accounts in the book are certainly interesting and valuable historically, if you are truly seeking details on Anne's last few months, you will not find it here.

Anne Frank is definitely one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust, but it's easy to forget that her story is just one in the millions of others. Filmmaker Willy Lindwer interviewed six women who encountered Anne and the rest of the Frank family after their August 1944 arrest for his documentary The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank and released a book of the same name.

Hannah Goslar had been close friends with Anne since both were little girls and was shocked to find her on the other side of a Bergen-Belsen fence, believing that the Franks had fled to Switzerland. An entry in Anne's diary describes a frightening dream in which Hannah (or Lies as she was known) was covered in rags and dying of starvation and disease begging her friend to save her. Sadly, the situation ended up being reversed.

Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, a captured Dutch Resistance fighter, and her sister befriended Anne and Margot in the Westerbork transit camp and all four were later transported to Auschwitz and the wasteland that was Bergen-Belsen. Janny remembers seeing Anne wearing nothing but an old blanket after tearing off her lice infested clothes during a hallucination brought on by typhus. That was the last time she saw her alive. Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder remembers both girls wasted away to bones lying next to the oftentimes open door of the barracks in the dead of winter.

Bloeme Evers-Emden's, a classmate of the Frank sisters, account of life in the extermination camps digs a bit deeper than the others by focusing on the psyche of a prisoner and the importance of support groups to help each other get through the day. According to her, whatever issues Anne had with her mother while in hiding faded away in the scene of Auschwitz and the two along with Margot stuck together at all times.

While sharing Anne's final days, all of the women show a common thread of being innocent people punished and persecuted for no reason at all. Some were mothers, teens, and students. They had friends and family members who met unfortunate deaths, witnessed lives being destroyed on a daily basis, and not being able to do a thing to stop it. They also speak about how they managed to build lives for themselves out of the pure hell they endured and the importance of remembering the past so that it never repeats itself. No matter how hard it is.

"The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" is only periphally a book about Anne - but it is pointedly a book about Anne's experience in those last months of her life. With the exception of her close friend Hannah Goslar, who talks about her at length, Anne is mentioned only in passing by the other interviewees, all of whom were acquainted with her. But their individual stories of what they endured in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen is also her story, and illuminates her time in the camps as she herself would have - but never got the chance to. A good addition to a library of Anne Frank material, or an excellent compendium of personal experiences during the Holocaust, whichever way is more valuable to the reader.

Whenever I feel depressed, defeated, worthless and hopeless, I read this book. I've read this book more than once. Every time I read it, I gain courage and strength. This book is my Bible. It touches my heart and soul.