I FOCUS 1

Anne Frank's
Final
Agony

Seven women who were with
Anne Frank in her last months
of life are interviewed in
a Dutch documentary.

TOM TUGEND

Special to The Jewish News

wanted to bring the
symbol back to the
human being," says
Dutch filmmaker Willy Lind-
wer of his television documen-
tary, The Last Seven Months
of Anne Frank.
lb recreate the final agony
of the 15-year-old girl from
the last entry in her diary to
her death, Lindwer inter-
viewed seven women who had
been part of Frank's journey
from the transit camp in
Amsterdam to Auschwitz
and finally to Bergen-Belsen.
The 80-minute film opens
with a tender reminiscence by
Hannah Pick-Goslar, de-
scribed in the diary as
Frank's best friend, Lies
Goosens, who revisits the
Montessori primary school
where both girls studied
before the Nazi invasion.
Pick-Goslar, now a Jerusalem
resident, thought that the
Frank family had escaped to
Switzerland and was stunned
to discover Frank in Bergen-
Belsen, a few days before she
died of typhus in March 1945.
The Frank family was ar-
rested on Aug. 4, 1944, then
spent a month at the transit
camp of Westerbork. On Sept.
3, the last Dutch transport
left for Auschwitz with the
Frank family and another
1,015 men, women and chil-
dren, of whom 45 men and 82
women survived the war.
On arrival at Auschwitz,
Frank was not sent to the gas
chamber during the initial

selection by Dr. Mengele
because she looked older than
her years. But in November,
in the face of advancing Rus-
sian troops, Anne, her sister
Margot and her mother,
Edith, were packed onto a
transport for 'Bergen-Belsen.
Lindwer, who directed and
produced the film, was drawn
to the story of Anne Frank by
his own background and by
what he considers the large-
ly untold story of women's
fate in the Holocaust. His

Willy Lindwer was
drawn to the story
of Anne Frank by
his own
background and
by what he
considers the
untold story of
women in the
Holocaust.

parents, both Polish Jews,
moved to Holland in 1930 and
were hidden by Dutch farm-
ers during the war.
"I was born in Amsterdam
in 1946 in a religiously tradi-
tional family," he says. "All
my family on my father's side
were killed by the Nazis and
my whole youth was linked to
the Wolocaust."
He started working for
Dutch television as a docu-
mentary maker. As he con-
tinued to follow books and
films on the Holocaust, he
found that almost all the
literature dealt with male vic-
tims. Even in the nine-hour

Filmmaker Willy Lindwer is shown in his Amsterdam studio during the editing of The Last Seven Months of Anne
Frank. The documentary consists of interviews with seven women who witnessed the last part of Anne Frank's life,

from the final entry in her diary to her death in Bergen-Belsen.

film Shoah, he says, there is
nothing about the women
who were killed.
"The reason, I think, is that
it is even more delicate to ask
a woman what happened in
the camps than a man," Lind-
wer observes. In The Last
Seven Months, the women do
speak. Few scenes are more
unbearable than when these
modest women recount the
utter humiliation and degra-
dation as SS men forced them
to strip.
Lindwer started his search
for witnesses three years ago
by placing advertisements in
Israeli and Jewish news-
papers and through leads fur-
nished by Holland's Institute
for War Documentation. But
Lindwer was very selective.
"There have been all kinds
of sensational stories by

women who claimed that
Anne Frank had died in their
arms, and I absolutely did
not want to make a sensa-
tional film," he says. "I had to
be able to trust the women
that they spoke the truth."
He winnowed the subjects
down to four women from
Amsterdam, two from Israel
and one from Canada.
Even then, the going was
slow. "These women, in-
cluding one who is a psy-
chiatrist, had never talked
about their experiences
before," says Lindwer. "I had
to gain their confidence, to
assure them that nothing I
would do would harm them.
It took many weeks before we
could even start talking
about the Holocaust."
Two women who talked to
Lindwer were Janny Brandes

and Rachel van Amerongen
Frankfoorder.
Brandes, a socialist who
had fought in the Dutch
underground and a woman
with a strong, calm face, was
on the same transport from
Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen.
"In the last days in Bergen-
Belsen," she recalls, "Anne
stood before me wrapped in a
blanket and told me that she
was so terrified of the vermin
in her clothes that she had
thrown her clothes away."
Van Amerongen-Frank-
foorder, who lives in Bat Yam
near Thl Aviv, also remem-
bers. "The Frank girls,
Margot and Anne, looked ter-
ribly skinny. They looked aw-
ful. They were bickering be-
cause of their typhus disease.
They were just skin and bone
and were terribly cold.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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