My Friend Anne Frank – Pick-Goslar Hannah (2023)

The inspiring and heartbreaking true story of two best friends torn apart and reunited against all odds. When Hannah Pick-Goslar’s family fled Nazi Germany for Amsterdam, she became close friends with her next-door neighbour, the precocious, outspoken and fun-loving Anne Frank. Hannah instantly warmed to happy-go-lucky Anne, and for seven blissful years the inseparable pair navigated school, boys and coming of age in Amsterdam’s Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood. In 1942, however, life changed abruptly for the thirteen-year-old girls. The Nazi occupation of Amsterdam separated the friends without warning. Hannah called on Anne, but there was no trace of her friend or her precious diary. Tormented by uncertainty, Hannah wondered whether Anne had somehow escaped danger and was alive and well elsewhere. Only when Hannah reached her darkest point, imprisoned with her family in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, did she have an astonishing chance reunion with Anne. Desperate to help her weak and struggling friend survive, Hannah risked everything to throw packages of food and clothing over a barbed-wire fence. She learned of Anne’s death only after her liberation, when Otto Frank visited her in hospital. From then on, Otto became a second father to Hannah and made sure she was always cared for. In this groundbreaking memoir, Hannah Pick-Goslar offers an intimate portrait of Anne Frank, the young Jewish diarist who has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world.