The End ..

A childhood friend of Anne, Hannah Pick-Goslar, coincidentally ended up in Bergen-Belsen, too. One night she heard a voice speaking Dutch across the fence. The voice belonged to Mrs. van Pels, also held at Bergen-Belsen. She brought Anne to the fence to speak to Hannah, although they couldn't see each other because the fence was stuffed with straw. Hannah later told her story in the book, "Memories of Anne Frank," by Alison Leslie Gold:

"Anne came to the barbed-wired fence. I couldn't see her. The fence and the straw were between us. There wasn't much light. Maybe I saw her shadow. It wasn't the same Anne. She was a broken girl, I probably was too, but it was so terrible.

She immediately began to cry, and she told me, 'I don't have any parents anymore. I have nobody any more.' She knew her sister was too sick to live, and her mother was so sick she died in Auschwitz. Anne was sure her father was dead, because anyone over 55 went straight to the gas chamber, and her father was 56.

I always think, if Anne had known that her father was still alive, she might have had more strength to survive, because she died very shortly before the end, only a few days before liberation .."

Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, also held at the KZ camp Bergen-Belsen, later recalled Anne standing in the winter cold of Bergen-Belsen, wrapped only in a blanket. Beyond tears. She tells her moving story in Willy Lindwer`s excellent book The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank:

"She came to me in the terrible freezing winter cold and she had thrown off her clothes because of the lice and covered herself with a blanket ... When I came to Anne's barrack several days later, Anne was already dead ... Margot had fallen out of her bed and died and Anne had lived a little longer than her sister. She didn't have any more tears. Oh, we hadn't had tears for a long time ...''

In Newsweek Magazine, July 21, 1997 another holocaust survivor, Irma Sonnenberg Menkel, tells the story of Anne Frank and her death in Bergen-Belsen "I saw Anne Frank Die":

"One of the children in my barracks toward the end of the war was Anne Frank, whose diary became famous after her death. Typhus was a terrible problem especially for the children. Of 500 in my barracks, maybe 100 got it, and most of them died. Many others starved to death.

When Anne Frank got sick with typhus, I remember telling her she could stay in the barracks.I have a dim memory of Anne Frank speaking about her father.

She was a nice, fine person .. There was so little to eat. In my early days there, we were each given one roll of bread for eight days, and we tore it up, piece by piece. One cup of black coffee a day and one cup of soup. And water. That was all. Later there was even less.

When I asked the commandant for a little bit of gruel for the children's diet, he would sometimes give me some extra cereal.

Anne Frank was among those who asked for cereal, but how could I find cereal for her? It was only for the little children, and only a little bit.

The children died anyway ... In the evening, we tried to help the sickest. In the morning, it was part of my job to tell the soldiers how many had died the night before. Then they would throw the bodies on the fire ...

Anne Frank would say to me, "Irma, I am very sick." I said, "No, you are not sick." She wanted to be reassured that she wasn't. When she slipped into a coma, I took her in my arms.

She didn't know that she was dying. She didn't know that she was so sick. You never know. At Bergen-Belsen, you did not have feelings anymore ..."

In Willy Lindwer`s book The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank Rachel van Ameronger-Frankfoorder tells about the death of Anne Frank and her sister in Bergen-Belsen:

"Possibly it was on one of those trips to the latrine that I walked past the bodies of the Frank sisters, one or both - I don't know.

At the time, I assumed that the bodies of the Frank girls had also been put down in front of the barracks. And then the heaps would be cleared away. A huge hole would be dug and they were thrown into it ..."