What an amazing read, my attention was captured by the title but Hannah's story is so much more than her friendship with Anne. It is still quite unbelievable what Hannah and hundreds of thousands other people went through, but Hannah focuses on the kindness that was shown to her and her family, often by people who were in the same situation as her.

We should never forget what happened during WWII in the hope that it will never be repeated.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read My Friend Anne Frank.

I read the Diaries of Anne Frank a long while ago although this book inspires me to read it again. Told by a good friend of Anne Franks the storyline goes from pre WW2 to post war including the later years of Hannah. An amazing recollection and at times the reader becomes very aware of the pain of the Holocaust. Whilst we all
Know what went on during that time this book is so much more. Thanks to Hannah for retelling her story and to Dina and her publisher. Thanks also to NetGalley.

Thank you for allowing me to review this new book. Hannah Goslar has written very clearly about her life and friendship with Anne Frank from a young age until their passing. I have read Anne Frank's diary, visited the house where the family hid for 2 years and met her step sister so am familiar with the sad story. This latest book is well written and it was good to gave zn update at the end of what happened to those mentioned in the telling of the story.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. I believe that it should be read by everyone to remember what happened during the 2nd World War to innocent people because of one man's prejudices and power.

I’m fascinated by any books relating to the Holocaust. The title intrigued me and I wanted to know more. A wonderful read. Harrowing but truthful. Well worth reading

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 Hannah and her parents Ruth and Hans moved to Amsterdam. There they met another young German girl and her family, Anne Frank (pronounced Anna, I have now learned). As described in this memoir Anne “…would become the most famous victim of the Holocaust”. This story follows the relative normality of pre-teen girls, bickering and making up, as their friendship group grew to “The Little Dipper Minus Two”. As the Nazis invade the Netherlands and families start going missing in the night, we follow Hannah’s story and how it interlinks with that of Anne Frank.

Hannah’s story really brought it all to life again. To remember that of the 120,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the war, only 5,000 returned. To learn of some more names and stories, not just Hannah Goslar, Anne Frank and their families, but also Ilse Wagner, Sanne Ledermann, her sister Barbara and their family.

To put my WWII historical knowledge into context, my interest in the period started with a GCSE Modern World History but my biggest influence is my husband, a WWII history buff – or one of the ‘afflicted’. Anyone who knows me will know we've visited Auschwitz and Dachau. I read The Diary of a Young Girl when I was younger (and I’ll be reading it again now), and I have read a number of other stories both real life and fiction centred around WWII.

Now in 2023 in the UK, we hear people saying ‘it’s like living in Nazi Germany’… it’s not, read this book. But it is important to know and understand how the ‘othering’ of people happens, and what it can become if left unchecked.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was stunning and it has left a lasting impression on me. The agonising sense of doom when Hannah was describing her childhood years in the lead up to the war was terrifying. I had to put this book down a couple of times just to draw breath.
Books like this should be compulsory reading in schools. How lucky we are that survivors such as Hannah were able to tell their story. The horrors didn't start in the gas chambers, they started with the persecution of innocent people just because of their beliefs and culture and the world just stood by and watched.
So many of the themes that led to the horrific conditions of WWII are prevalent in today's society and this book serves as a timely reminder of how we need to fight fascism and right wing ideology in its every form.

Hannah Goslar (known as Hanneli) was born in Berlin in 1928 and died in 2022. She was extremely important in proving her firsthand account of the German occupation of the Netherlands, her deportation to Westerbork and finally the horrors of Bergen-Belsen. Her survival and that of her younger Sister is remarkable in so many ways. From the 120,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands only 5000 survived.

Hannah was one of Anne Frank’s closest friends (Lies Goosens in Anne’s diaries) and she recounts those happy early years to personalise Anne as well as her other school friends who were almost all murdered. Of course the story is horrific but the stories of kindness and sacrifice allow for these children and their families to be remembered and not lost to history.

Thanks to Netgalley and Ebury Publishing, Penguin Random House for a review copy

Great book although more about the life and experiences of the author than Anne Frank.

It is well written and very moving. The descriptions of the horrors that everyone went through during the second world war are brought to life by Hannah Pick-Goslar.

Highly recommended.

Read and reviewed in exchange for a free copy from NetGalley. This book was phenomenal. I first read the Diary of a Young Girl when I was around 9, so have been aware of Hannah Goslar for a long time. This was a beautifully written, heartbreaking and heartwarming book which provided new insights and understanding into life for Jews in occupied Netherlands and in the camps. It was painful to read at times, but so worthwhile, a must read.

My Friend Anne Frank follows the story of Hannah Goslar, from her early life in Germany, relocating as a refugee to Amsterdam and as a prisoner in multiple concentration camps.

Hannah’s narrative begins with the story of her parents which I found immensely interesting. Her father was an observant Jew, the head of the Prussian state government press office and a deputy cabinet minister in the 1930s, where he was able to see first hand Hitler’s rise to power and due to where they lived because of his job, close to the Reichstag - Hannah vividly remembers the night the building burned, and when the book burnings begin, she describes how she could smell the smoke from their apartment.

Due to her fathers outspoken public warnings and criticisms of the Nazi government, this marked him as an enemy of the state and the young family flee to London. When his new employers did not respect the Sabbath, his contract was rescinded and instead the family found refuge in Amsterdam.

It is here they find themselves alongside many other German Jews, who she describes as feeling relatively safe there - because even though it is closer to Germany, The Netherlands was a neutral country in the First World War and is keen on keeping that stance during the new unfolding war around them. It here that we first hear of the Frank family, who are also German Jew refugees, living in the same apartment complex as the Goslar’s, with the two youngest daughters, Hannah and Anne, becoming fast friends.

Goslar speaks of their childhood; consisting of sleepovers, going to the movies, dinner parties between the two families on Sabbath, their love of a particular book series and interest in royal families.

They are aware of the rising antisemitism and war around them, but it is when Germany invades The Netherlands in their pre-teens that it shatters the idyllic childhood their families worked so hard to cultivate under the circumstances. Soon their freedom is taken piece by piece; having to identify themselves as Jewish by wearing a large yellow star, banned from visiting non-Jewish homes, banned from owning bicycles, taking the tram, visiting cinemas, parks, public pools, having an imposed curfew and then being forced to leave the only school they know, as new laws state they can only be educated with and by other Jews.

Soon Jews begin disappearing, either from fleeing the country, going into hiding or from being called to and travelling to the mysterious ‘work camps’. When Margot, Anne’s older sister is called to one - the Frank family leave in to the night to flee to Switzerland, according to clues they left behind. Hannah then tells a grim tale of how when a classmate or teacher is absent, she is unsure if they are sick for the day or if she will ever see them again.

The Goslar’s believe they are safe, due to Hannah’s mother being pregnant with her third child and Hannah’s father being involved in the Jewish Committee, along with purchased passports and the family having been granted conditional asylum to British controlled Palestine in exchange for German prisoners of war, if an exchange were to happen.

But even this cannot be a guarantor and Hannah and her family are eventually sent to a work camp. Due to her families status they are ‘housed’ in a separate area due to this and after a year are transferred to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp where the conditions and treatment of the family deteriorate even further.

It is through this nightmarish ordeal that we can see some of the best of humanity, in the actions of the other prisoners. When Hannah goes to the hospital bunks for a month, a stranger vows to take care of her toddler sister, when Hannah learns that Anne is not safe in Switzerland and instead on the other side of the fence in a dire part of the camp, her bunk mates compile their few rations (twice - after a first failed attempt) to throw over the fence to give to Anne - and above all, the love Hannah clearly has for her little sister Gabi. Hannah never gives up because her purpose is more than her own preservation, her purpose is to take care of her sister, who by now cannot remember life outside of concentration camps.

This book is so much more than a friendship with Anne Frank, is is about a loss of youth and innocence, sisterly love and so much more that I simply cannot find the words for. Hannah takes us into her early adulthood, but at the end of the book - after acknowledgments, there is a elegy about Hannah and Anne’s classmates who were murdered with their ages at death; 13, 14, 15, 13 - it is a punch in the throat and incomprehensible to think that there was a time in recent history that humans allowed this to happen.

Thank you to Ebury Publishing, Penguin Random House and Net Galley for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to be an ARC for 'My Friend Anne Frank'. What an amazing real life story beautifully told and how sad to hear Hannah passed away peacefully in October 2022. The story of her early friendship with Anne Frank and the diverse ways their lives went is well told. The volume of murders and the barbaric treatment of the Jewish people is well known but also excellently described in this book. The statistics through the book and at the end make poignant reminders of the horrendous atrocities. Thoroughly recommend purchase of this book.

Could there be a more poignant and important memoir than this one, other than Anne Frank's herself? Especially as it turns out that Hannah passed away in October 2022.

To get the chance to read about two remarkable women as girls, as just friends, before they were who they were, is just amazing.

I'm always impressed when someone can remember the goings-on of their childhood. I know there was a lot going on and you tend to remember the difficult times, but I can barely remember ten minutes ago let alone ninety odd years!

It doesn't matter how many books about the war and the Holocaust I read, there will never be too many. Every single person's story deserves to be told and deserves to be heard and this is right up there.

Hannah explains early on that Anne Frank's first name was actually pronounced Anna - her full name was Annelies. This may not be a big thing, almost negligible, easy to gloss over. But I think if we're going to remember this remarkable girl, I think we need to be pronouncing her name correctly. "Anna" Frank.

I know a fair bit about WW2, or as much as was taught at school and that you learn as you get older, but to read about it from, not only the perspective of someone who was there, but from a child...it serves as a terrible reminder that this was happening by real people to real people, and not that long ago, historically.

Even though I have a copy, I've always been a bit on the fence about whether Anne's diary should have been published, especially as she was so secretive about it during her life. But I feel the importance of it has outweighed the negatives. And I think this book can be put on the same pedestal, which is nice to think about for the two childhood friends.

My general rule is I only read happy or uplifting books in bed. And I couldn't exactly say this book was happy. Yes there were happier moments, but in a book about WW2, unsurprisingly, it was quite hard reading. But I couldn't' bear to put it down at the end of the evening. It felt too much like an insult. And so I stayed up until I could no longer keep my eyes open, trying to absorb this unbelievable story.

At times I even forgot it was a true story, trying to fathom how someone's imagination could come up with it, and then of course, there's the stark reminder that it was unimaginable.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I cried reading this. At the horrors of war but also the horrors closer to home, the devastation of families and friendships.

What I find absolutely beautiful but heartbreaking is how positive these people can be when they've literally been through hell and back. The power of the human spirit.

A lot of war books tend to only focus on that six year period, and lots of survivors don't like to dwell on their memories. But we see what happened post-war to Hannah and I think that's as important. It shows that there is hope in any situation and we must remember that during turbulent times.

At the end, Dina has provided little bits about the friends mentioned in the book. Who survived and who did not. And I think this is of immense importance to their memories.