The Last Days of Anne Frank

Picking up The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer, I was afraid this would be a tacky piece of writing that simply showed the suffering of one person for our voyeuristic “pleasure.”  But Lindwer’s book is an important document in itself.  Indeed he is interviewing women who knew Anne Frank in Westerbork, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belson, but as one reads, we discover that Anne Frank is only one piece in this story.  Lindwer presents (full?) interviews of six remarkable women who not only knew Anne Frank, but also have significant stories to tell themselves.  While it would be too much to say that Anne Frank becomes a bit player in their stories, it is not a stretch to claim that she becomes contextualized in a time and place and in the life of Dutch Jewish women.