Anne Frank's Living Classmates, December 2009
The information came from the Web site of
a
Dutch Television Station (link down 3-20-11) that has a series called
"Classmates." The series identifies a group of classmates and interviews
them (now decades after they were in class together). Typically, the
TV series examines a group that has no one famous (and they are middle-aged).
This program was a special edition of "Classmates" focusing
on Anne's classmates from the different schools she attended.
It aired in late 2009.
The questionnaires have
been translated here to English, thanks to
Babelfish,
my very helpful Netherlands contact, and my own common sense and
intuition.
Anne mentions her classmates in her diaries, particularly
while she was still attending school and
before she knew she'd possibly be going into hiding.
Anne mentioned over twenty names of classmates in her 15-16 June '42
diary entries (see pages 187-188 of the 1986 Critical Edition).
Though the Critical Edition is the least edited, the people
she'd mentioned often asked that their names be obscured, so when you
see initials instead of names, those are not even the real
initials. Scanning the approximately 30 people (23 not just
initials) she mentioned in that pair of entries, I recognize three
from the living classmates above: Maurice
Coster, Hannah Goslar, and
Jacqueline van Maarsen.
Anne mentions other classmates elsewhere in her diary as well.
In individual classmates' pages, I put lists of where I know
Anne mentioned that person in the CE, plus their information page
from this site.
(It's possible some of these names in the Critical Edition of
the diary were translated. For instance, Sallie Springer could
be Sally Kimmel? But I don't think so. Later in the CE,
his last name is written as Kimmel.)
After going into hiding, in September 1942, Anne also wrote
a series of quick pretend notes to her friends. You
can see them on page 223 of the CE (1986). Perhaps some of them are
also imaginary. I recognize no one from that page in this set of people's names.
There are a number of factors that make these names unfamiliar.
It seems the TV station cast the net wide to find living classmates. Anne
went to two schools in her school days: the Montessori school
(pictured above) and the Jewish Lyceum. Also, like Anne, a lot of
her classmates died during WWII. Further, this group of people is
getting old and some have died since the war's end. Still further,
some are still living but do not welcome the attention of television
in their old age.
