FILE--This is an udated file photo from pre-World War II Amsterdam of Hannah Goslar Pick, right, and childhood friend Anne Frank, who refered to Hannah as Lies in her famous diaries, during a game of hopscotch. In Oct. 1997, the story of Pick's friendship with Anne Frank was published in the book "Memories of Anne Frank; Reflections of a Childhood Friend." Pick recounts that in Frank's final days in the Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she was barely a shadow of the feisty teen-ager the world later came to know through her diaries, devastated by what she thought was the loss of her entire family. Frank perished at Bergen-Belsen just one month before the camp was liberated in April 1945.AP Photo

Anne Frank's spirit was broken in Nazi camp, friend says

Web posted February 5, 1998

Associated Press

JERUSALEM -- In her final days in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank was crushed by the loss of most of her family and spoke in hushed whispers -- a shadow of the spirited teen-ager the world came to know through her diaries.

Hannah Goslar Pick -- whose story of growing up with Anne is the subject of a new book -- last saw her friend in early February 1945, about a month before Anne died of typhus in the camp and two months before Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the Allies.

The two girls were held in different sections of Bergen-Belsen, separated by a tall barbed wire fence. From time to time, they pressed up to the fence to speak to each other.

``I have no one,'' Anne once told her friend, weeping.

At the time, the Nazis had shorn Anne's dark locks. ``She always loved to play with her hair,'' Pick said. ``I remember her curling her hair with her fingers. It must have killed her to lose it.''

Hannah Goslar Pick, 69, childhood friend of Anne Frank, known in her famous diary as Lies, is shown at her Jerusalem apartment Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1998. AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma

Just 2 1/2 years before that, in June 1942, Pick had been at Anne's 13th birthday party and saw the red-and-white checkered diary given as a gift by her parents.

This was a time when Pick and Anne would spent afternoons eating ice cream and playing hopscotch and pingpong. During school recess, Anne would sit and write in her notebooks. She'd reproach anyone who dared ask her what she was up to with the biting reply: ``Mind your own business!'' Pick recalled.

In July 1942, Anne's family went into hiding from Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. After World War II, Anne's father Otto, the only member of the family to survive, published his daughter's diaries which document the two years in hiding.

Since then, the diaries have become the subject of films, books and even a musical. Broadway recently revived the play, ``The Diary of Anne Frank.''

Pick motions toward her bookshelf in her sunny Jerusalem apartment, laden with books devoted to the subject of Anne in English, Hebrew, German, Dutch and Japanese.

In October, the story of Pick's friendship with Anne was published in the book, ``Memories of Anne Frank; Reflections of a Childhood Friend.''

Pick, a widow with three children, is 69 -- the same age Anne would be today had she survived. She remembered Anne as sharp and witty, but not extraordinary.

``She was a normal girl, but her sister Margot was an outstanding scholar and the more intellectual of the two,'' she said.

Pick marveled at how the world has transformed her friend into an icon. She is disappointed by the sanitized picture of Anne.

``Today, everyone thinks she was someone holy but this is not at all the case,'' Pick said. ``She was a girl who wrote beautifully and matured quickly during extraordinary circumstances.''

``However, not everyone wants to hear about the Holocaust. It's easier to read Anne's diary.''