Jacqueline van Maarsen Bücher

Die Autorin teilt die freudigen Momente und schmerzhaften Erinnerungen ihrer Freundschaft mit Anne Frank.

1941 begegnet Jacqueline van Maarsen auf dem Jüdischen Lyzeum Anne Frank. Sie sind schon bald unzertrennliche beste Freundinnen: Sie machen zusammen Hausaufgaben, lesen die gleichen Bücher, übernachten beieinander und gründen einen Mädchenclub. Als Anne eines Tages nicht mehr da ist, freut sich Jacqueline, da sie glaubt, dass die Franks in die Schweiz ausgereist seien. Erst nach dem Krieg berichtet ihr Otto Frank von Annes Schicksal. Jacqueline van Maarsen erzählt darüber hinaus die Geschichte ihrer Eltern, einer französischen Katholikin und einem niederländischen Juden, von ihren Kriegserlebnissen und wie sie selbst der drohenden Deportation entkam.§

In 1941, Jacqueline van Maarsen meets Anne Frank at a Jewish school, and they become inseparable friends, sharing homework and adventures. Jacqueline mistakenly believes Anne has fled to Switzerland, only to learn of her fate from Otto Frank after the war. She also shares her parents' wartime experiences and her own escape from deportation.

In this follow-up to her previous memoir, Anne Frank’s childhood friend, Jacqueline van Maarsen, focuses on the reception of Anne’s legacy by her contemporaries and the inevitable commercialization of that legacy of which she is boldly critical. Running throughout the narrative is a literary parallel with an inheritance question that dominated a significant portion of van Maarsen's life and that of her mother's—a courageous woman who confronted the Nazis in Amsterdam and saved her two daughters from the concentration camps by providing evidence of their non-Jewish status. This story documents how both the van Maarsen family inheritance and the inheritance left by Anne Frank became the subject of unwarranted and tragic exploitation by outsiders, often with those charged with guarding both legacies turning a blind eye to the truth. The narrative also provides a subtle commentary on memory and the effects of time. In interweaving personal memories of her own childhood and early adult life with personal memories of Anne Frank and the use and abuse of her legacy, van Maarsen demonstrates how time filters what individuals inherit from their past, sometimes creating parallel worlds in which the historical truth loses significance, pushed aside by dreams of personal status and financial gain.