The Last Secrets of Anne Frank

Reviews

‘Fascinating . . . not only conveys the quiet heroism of what his mother contributed to Anne Frank’s story, but a sad playing-out of a family’s dysfunction, of the pain of survival, of the ripples of trauma flowing into succeeding generations’  'It took a network of courageous helpers to allow Anne Frank and her family to hide for as long as they did from the Nazis. It only took one person to betray them. This is a book that not only offers tantalizing new clues about their betrayer; it also sheds new light on the least known helper in a saga that encapsulates the tragedy of the Holocaust' 
  ‘Provides a poignant account of the poison left by Dutch collaboration . . . [and] the devastating effect that Bep’s lifelong secretiveness had on her family. It is for their own stories that these books should be read, not for the extraordinary fame of Anne Frank’  'Devastating, compelling' ‘This gripping account adds a missing human dimension to the story of the young girl hidden in an attic during the Nazi occupation of Holland—and those who helped and those who betrayed her. I read it in one gulp—as will you’  ‘As much a work of painful family therapy as painstaking historical analysis . . . A riveting read’   'A superbly well-written, intimate, engrossing, and heartrending reckoning with the endless damage done by genocide' ‘An important contribution to the literature on Anne Frank’  ‘For long, the story of Bep Voskuijl, one of Anne Frank’s courageous helpers, has been mostly kept in the dark. This captivating book tells her moving and tragic story, her wartime assistance in the Secret Annex, and the long shadows of the war on her life and her family’s’  ‘Part biography and part whodunit, The Last Secret of the Secret Annex is, above all, a bereaved son’s cri de coeur, simultaneously mourning and celebrating the mother he lost even before she died’ 

  ‘This powerful story brings to life Bep’s heroism and illuminates generations of a Dutch family, its secrets, and the trauma the Nazi occupation bequeathed to the future’ Expand reviews