Many people know Anne Frank from the diary she wrote while hiding from the Nazis with her family, but before WWII, Frank was a young girl growing up in Germany and later moving to Amsterdam with her family to escape from Hitler and the Nazi party.
While she was living in Amsterdam, Frank became friends with Hannah Pick-Goslar. The two girls went to school together, and Pick-Goslar even remembered attending Frank’s 13th birthday party. While at the party, she saw a red and white checked diary that was a birthday present to Frank from her parents. That diary would later become filled with Frank’s thoughts and observations while she and her family were in hiding.
Frank died of typhus while at a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, but Pick-Goslar ended up surviving. She moved to Israel, worked as a nurse, got married and had three children.
Now, at the age of 93, Pick-Goslar has passed away. The news of her death was released by The Anne Frank Foundation. In a statement, the foundation said, “Hannah Pick-Goslar meant a lot to the Anne Frank House, and we could always call on her.” They did not provide a cause of death.
Frank mentioned her friend, Pick-Goslar, in her diary. She called her Hanneli. In the diary, she wrote, “Hanneli and Sanne used to be my two best friends. People who saw us together always used to say: ‘There goes Anne, Hanne and Sanne.'”
According to The Anne Frank Foundation, Pick-Goslar helped share stories of what Frank’s life was like both before and after Frank wrote the diary. For example, Pick-Goslar recounted seeing Frank at the camp in Bergen-Belsen.
Pick-Goslar’s mother died, and she and her little sister were separated from their father and sent to an orphanage. Then, they were later sent to Bergan-Belsen, but in a separate area from where Frank was. When she learned that Frank was at the same camp, she wanted to try to talk to her. They met on opposite sides of a barbed wire fence.
Pick-Goslar told the Associated Press that the Nazi’s had cut Frank’s hair. She said, “She always loved to play with her hair. I remember her curling her hair with her fingers. It must have killed her to lose it.”
Watch the video below to hear Pick-Goslar describe meeting Frank while in Bergan-Belsen where she saw her friend for the very last time.