Customer Reviews

The Roommate of Anne Frank

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This soft cover book is only 95 or so pages but costs what a hardback would. An interesting book but I'm not sure that would justify the cost to most people.

The premise is this. The author managed to find some old letters, pictures and other effects that had belonged to Charlotte Kalotte ('Lotte mentioned in Anne's Diary) who was Fritz Pheffer's widow. She had recently died and somehow her personal things ended up being sold in a flea market in Amsterdam in the late 80's. The author used them and a variety of other sources to construct an imaginary interview with an elderly Charlotte and this is the first 49 pages of the book.

The remainder of the book consists of full page reproductions of Fritz's last letter to Charlotte before going into hiding and a number of other letters he had written her in the late 30's and early 40's. They are first presented in German and then in an English translation. The letters that Fritz sent her weekly from the secret annex are not included and the fictional Charlotte explains in the text that she'd had to destroy them as soon as she read them because they were dangerous to have (probably the truth).

The book is interesting in that it provides a lot more info about Fritz and puts a better face on him than Anne did in the diary. It also puts to rest a question that has been debated: they two were not legally married, however they had repeatedly tried to be but been refused due to the Nuremberg laws. Apparently even before the invasion, the Netherlands had upheld German law for German citizens living on their soil. They had, however, lived together and regarded each other as a married couple. All of his letters are addressed to "my beloved wife." Charlotte had married him posthumously in 1950.

A couple other interesting things:

* It explains that they had not fled earlier because they had family they did not want to abandon.
* Fritz and Charlotte had been in Berlin during the famous Krystalnaught (the night of the broken glass)
* Fritz and Charlotte had visited the Frank family every Sunday along with the van Pels' and others.

I'm an amateur Anne Frank scholar and this is a welcome addition to my Anne Frank library but as interesting as these things are, most of you may want to read it from the library before buying it.

NOTE: This is an English translation of a book which originally appeared in the Netherlands almost 2 decades ago.