For thousands of years, humans have used storytelling to enhance and change lives. From prehistoric fireside stories, to songs, novels, films, even social media reels, we are hardwired to seek identification and knowledge through hearing about other people’s experiences.
 
Some of my most popular podcast episodes to date have featured guests who do just this – relating their extraordinary life experience to fascinate, move and benefit all of those who hear it.  And I’m honoured to add today’s guests to that list.
 
Ruthie Meir is the daughter of the late Holocaust survivor Hannah Pick-Goslar. Dina Kraft is Hannah’s co-writer who helped bring her incredible story to life, in the brand-new book My Friend Anne Frank. Together Ruthie and Dina bring authenticity and emotional resonance to a real-life story, that will change the hearts and minds, of all who hear it.
 
If you are familiar with the famous ‘Diary of Anne Frank’, Hannah appeared in it as ‘Lies Goosens’.  As Ruthie and Dina explain to me, Hannah was born to Jewish parents in Berlin in 1928. After the Nazi Party was elected in 1933, the family escaped to what they believed was the safety of Amsterdam. And it was here that she met her friend, Anne Frank. The two became inseparable – until one day Anne just disappeared. Then in 1943, Hannah’s family was arrested and transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and somehow Hannah managed to survive, until the camp was finally liberated. 
 
It would have been lovely to talk to Hannah herself about her story, but she actually died back in October 2022 just a few weeks shy of her 94th birthday.
 
This is without question, a horrifying, unimaginable, and crushing story but at the same time, within it, there are definite moments of beauty, compassion and humanity.
 
It really was a great privilege to talk to Ruthie and Dina about Hannah and her life. I hope you enjoy listening.
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Millions and millions of people were slaughtered in the Holocaust, right?

When good people stay quiet, terrible things can happen.

When racism goes unchecked, it can lead to hatred.

We need books that tell people not just what Anne Frank went through in the Holocaust, what Anne Frank tells us all takes place in the confines of the attic.

She didn't get to write the book about the horrors that came after.

This is the book that Anna didn't get to write.

Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.

For thousands of years, humans have used storytelling to enhance and change lives.

From prehistoric fireside stories, to songs, novels, films, even social media reels, we are hardwired to seek identification and knowledge through hearing about other people's experiences.

Now some of my most popular podcast episodes to date have featured guests who do just this relating their extraordinary life experience to fascinate, move and benefit all of those who hear it and I'm honoured to add today's guests to that list.

Ruthie Mair is the daughter of the late Holocaust survivor, Hannah Pick Goslar.

Dina Kraft is Hannah's co-writer who helped bring her incredible story to life in the brand new book, My Friend, Anna Frank.

Together, Ruthie and Dina bring authenticity and emotional resonance to a real life story that will change the hearts and minds of all who hear it.

If you are familiar with the famous Diary of Anne Frank, Hannah actually appeared in it as Lise Goossens.

As Ruthie and Dina explained to me, Hannah was born to Jewish parents in Berlin in

the family escaped to what they believed was the safety of Amsterdam.

And it was here that she met her friend, Anna Frank.

The 2 became inseparable until 1 day, Anna just disappeared.

Then in 1943, Hannah's family was arrested and transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and somehow Hannah managed to survive inside there until the camp was finally liberated.

The book, My Friend Anna Frank, is the story of Hannah's life before the concentration camp, throughout and after.

Now I was actually sent an early copy of this book a few months ago, and once I started reading, I simply could not put it down.

It was moving, profound, and genuinely hand on heart, 1 of the most important books that I have ever read.

It's a remarkable story of how Hannah coped during her traumatic childhood, and despite it all, blossomed into a kind, compassionate adult determined to honor her friends.

It would have been lovely to talk to Hannah herself about her life story, but she actually died back in October,

just a few weeks shy of her 94th birthday.

This is without question a horrifying, unimaginable, and crushing story.

But at the same time within it, there are definite moments of beauty, compassion, and humanity.

It really was a great privilege to talk to Ruthie and Dina about Hannah and her life.

Dina, you obviously spent a lot of time with Hannah writing this book with her.

I wonder if you could outline her story for us because maybe people listening or watching they won't know her story and there's so much I want to unpick within that story but you know do you feel able to give us a bit of an overview?

Her father was a prominent journalist who would actually at this point become part of the Weimar government.

It was the government that was formed after World War I and this idea for a socialist democratic government.

But it was of course in the throes of after World War I when Germany was sort of tearing itself apart over what had happened and their terrible sort of humiliating defeat in the war.

And her father was 1 of the few Jews in the government and he happened to also be a religious Jew, which is sort of unusual for the time to have a religious Jew in such a high post.

But it was a very privileged life that she first was born into.

Her family lived across from a beautiful garden in central Berlin called the Tiergarten.

She'd walk among the rose gardens with her father and go to the zoo and look at the elephants.

And she would visit him at his office near the Reichstag, where the government was.

He was observant of Shabbat so he couldn't drive on Shabbat or take public transportation so they would walk together sometimes when he had work to do there.

And in the evenings they'd go to, you know, her mom would whisk off in beautiful velvet dresses with her father to important occasions and parties and whatnot.

But the world suddenly became darker and darker and darker outside her door.

The Nazis were rising, the Nazi movement was rising in power.

Through her bedroom window, she could smell the smoke of books being burned, she could hear the sounds of boots on the ground as they were marching through the town shouting anti-Jewish and anti-foreigner slogans.

So this is many years before the war actually started?

She was a tiny little girl, 3, 4 years old.

And her first memory is basically of her, is of the sounds outside and sort of her parents worried voices and then watching the house being packed up, this beautiful grand apartment being packed up and the family had to become refugees.

Her father had been speaking out very prominently against Hitler on the radio, in newspaper columns.

And he had been fired from his post in the government, like all Jews at this point had been fired from their posts in the government.

And he felt they had no future in Germany and their parents, her parents felt incredibly connected to Germany.

Like so many Jews living in Germany, you know, they were active in culture and in medicine and in teaching and they felt they were a very fabric and all of a sudden the country was turning against them as this hatred was rising.

They were a thousand years in Germany, the family.

Yeah, so they were more German than the Germans.

And so it must have been heart wrenching to suddenly feel in your

Her father had been a soldier in World War 1.

Like so many, so many Jews, so many Jews fought in the World War

And also my great-grandfather, he was 1 of the leaders of the Jews in Germany.

And as leaders, they took care of the Jews in all the world like in Morocco, like in Ethiopia, like in Russia, like in Warsaw, in Poland.

They were really around all the Jews in all the world to help them, to help really the poor people of them.

So the family are living in Berlin, things are starting to change dramatically.

And you write at the start of this book, I think in the early chapters basically about the family having to pack up and leave and take refuge in Amsterdam.

And it's interesting, you know, they briefly touched down in England actually, but ended up ultimately in Amsterdam.

And like a lot of, you know, refugees from, from places of conflict or war, they kind of think they'll wait it out, right?

They'll wait out, you know, Holland borders Germany.

They thought, you know, you know, in the early, in the early days, they could even still visit Germany before the war.

So they thought, you know, the way you see today, people fleeing Ukraine, where do they mostly go?

Poland, you know, they're close by, they'll go back.

And they began to build a new life in Amsterdam.

They didn't have much money and they didn't speak the language.

Hannah, Ruti's grandmother, described Dutch as a throat condition, not a language.

And, and they basically, she, Hannah's parents created a sort of a an agency for fellow refugees out of their living room.

Because he understood that the Jews will come there.

And there was there was there wasn't a lot of support inside the country for helping German refugees inside Holland.

So he and a colleague and friend named Mr.

Lederman created this two-man agency basically in the living room and Hannah's mother helped out as the typist and secretary.

And they were just sort of beginning to settle in and they had just arrived and Hannah was terrified of going to school.

She had to be sort of pried off of the door of the family front door to get together to go to nursery school.

And at nursery school, this big, beautiful Montessori school, which still exists in Amsterdam.

It's the same place that the children play in the same places.

Yeah, these sort of high ceilings and beautiful doors leading out to a garden.

It was at the time sort of a new idea of progressive education and her parents were progressive and they wanted her to have a progressive liberal education.

And she was sort of a shy child and she was clinging to her mother's skirts and she was terrified and speaking to the teacher and looking around at the children all busy with different sort of games and places.

And she sees a little girl with shiny black hair playing silver bells.

And the girl turns around and they look at each other and they have this moment of recognition because just the day before in the grocery store, Hannah and her mother had overheard another woman and her daughter speaking in German and they had exchanged a couple of words at the grocery store.

And that was a little girl from the grocery store.

And this little girl playing bells turns around, sees the very shy Hannah, looks at her, they recognize each other and they run into each other's arms with a big, big hug, chattering away in German, 2 little refugee girls.

And that little girl's name was Anne Frank.

The Anne Frank, who I actually, I'm now learning that her name is actually Anna

That was the start of this beautiful, poignant friendship that is detailed so wonderfully in the book.

Every Shabbat, every Saturday, they used to eat together.

Right, so the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night and there's a traditional meal that goes with that.

You have challah, this traditional egg bread called challah, and you bless the wine and you have a nice meal together.

And Hannah's family that was more religious would host this meal on Friday nights and Anna's family would come.

Anna's family lived in the building just next door to theirs.

So what's really interesting as we sort of unpick this story is, I think the similarities, at least at the starts from what happens when people flee a certain country.

Like it's really interesting that they left Germany and found other Jewish families in Amsterdam and then shared that sort of cultural experience with them to almost, I don't know, keep some sort of connection going.

And I think about, and again, circumstances very, very different to be clear.

My parents were immigrants from India to the UK.

And, you know, I think now back to my childhood, they would have other Indian friends and they would do things that they used to do back at home as a way of sort of holding onto that culture.

So it's interesting to hear that similarity, right?

They were holding on to what they were used to, especially the mother.

She really wanted all the time, if she could, to go back to Germany because she loved all the culture there.

It was very hard for her to get used to the Dutch culture.

Now What's interesting for me is that we go through in the book in the first person beautifully, Hannah writing about her experiences in Amsterdam, meeting Anna Frank, going to school, you know, the things that other little girls go through, you know, the things they were talking about, the things that were getting teased about.

It feels like you're reading a really good fictional novel, yet it's actually real, it's all real.

And what's striking to me is that as the war started closing in in Amsterdam, you know, the rising of the Nazis there, the restrictions being put on Jewish people there.

She comes across as really upbeat, you know, like an optimist, like even though they couldn't go to certain cinemas or no Jews allowed at that swimming pool in what she considered her home.

Certainly as I read the book, I read a story of someone who is optimistic and positive.

She was very optimistic, I think, till the end of her life.

And I think maybe because of this, she had good life.

But she, what they did, the Germans, it was every day another thing.

So you say, okay, I cannot go to the swimming pool, I will not go.

I cannot sit on the bench in the park, okay.

I cannot see a film, I will do it at home.

I cannot go to sandbox, I will do it at home.

So every, yeah, every day a new law, but he wanted to get used to it and say, okay, I cannot go with a bicycle.

Everything they tried to get used to it and said, if this is what it is, it's not so bad.

You know, they didn't know on that time that all the Jews are sent to being killed in Poland.

So it's really interesting the way the Germans handled the Dutch story when they ended up invading in May, 1940.

It was, they called it a velvet conquest.

She hears the sound of what she thinks is thunder, it turns out it's planes, it's Nazi warplanes flying overhead, the invasion has begun.

Okay so, that just gives me shudders that, when I think about how old my children are at the moment.

Right, so she's 11 years old, she's living her life, her new life in Amsterdam, having her and her family have fled from Berlin because they're scared and worried.

And now they're getting scared and worried.

And she, despite all the restrictions, she just goes to bed 1 night and she hears what she thinks is thunder, but it's actually planes.

She jumps into her bed with her parents to be comforted.

And then the father draws back the curtains.

The first light of morning is beginning and they see plane after plane after plane.

According to some accounts, the planes were flying so low that they could actually see the swastikas on the wings.

Rotterdam at the time was being bombed into basically oblivion.

Amsterdam was not bombed, but the planes were coming in and her father, who is a very calm man otherwise, very sort of fastidious, flies into a panic.

He's going to be a public enemy number 1 because of his past government, government job and being a critic against Hitler.

And they start trying to destroy any evidence they might have in the house that they were, that, you know, they have this connection of his past life.

So out of the drawers come files and files of papers.

And Hannah's job is to take the papers which they're tearing up and toss them into the toilet and flush them down the toilet.

And at the same time, her mother sees a bronze statue, a bronze statue of her father's former boss, who had been the president of Prussia, who was 1 of, Otto Braun, who was 1 of Hitler's rivals, I guess you could say.

And I think that's incriminating evidence.

So they started hauling down the stairs of their apartment building, the statue of Otto Braun, and they put it, they shove it on the sidewalk and they look around them and all around them are other German Jews.

This neighborhood was in South Amsterdam, it was a new neighborhood, a lot of German Jews, refugees had moved into this neighborhood.

And they were also trying to get rid of whatever they thought might be criminating and people were burning papers and files that they thought might be problematic.

He left the house because he was afraid when the Germans come, they will take him for sure.

So just again, I don't mean to keep pausing the story.

It's just because obviously people may not have read the book yet.

It's so compelling and engaging and I really think it will help everyone.

But I'll be honest with you, I couldn't put that book down when I started reading it.

I was on holiday with my wife and kids and I just couldn't stop reading it.

And every time I stopped, I would just hug my kids a little bit more.

I was just a little bit more grateful for my life.

Honestly, like it's 1 of those books where I don't think I quite see the world in the same way anymore.

So now you're telling me there's an 11 year old girl who is now trying to help her dad hide incriminating evidence because the Nazis are coming.

That is a completely different childhood that the child and my kids are currently experiencing, that's for sure.

So there's fear, anxiety, watching your dad probably change overnight in terms of character?

And what he did was he tried to come here to this country.

Like thousands of other people, he rushed to the shores, he rushed to a port city about an hour outside of Amsterdam, hoping to catch a boat to England.

And although thousands and thousands of people went to that shore, I think in the end, 200 people were able to somehow secure passage to England.

And as, as Ruchi said, he lived in hiding for weeks and weeks until he finally came out.

Can I ask 1 thing that has been, I've been thinking about a lot, that the title of the book is My Friend Anna Frank?

Now, many people around the world know the story of Anna Frank through her diary, okay?

Now, I'll be honest, I have not read her diary.

I know many people have, I just haven't for whatever reason.

I think I'm going to try this summer now.

But Hannah's story herself of this move, her going to concentration camps, her surviving it, what happened afterwards, which we're definitely gonna get into, that story has full merit off its own, right?

Yeah, I think the title comes from this idea that the through line of her entire life was her friendship with Anna Frank.

You know, she moved, you know, by chance she happens to befriend a little girl that becomes the face of Holocaust victims.

Anna Frank has become sort of an icon, a symbol.

You know, the numbers are too much to grasp.

And she's the face of the children of the Holocaust.

And there's a certain, you know, heartbreaking irony where by, you know, we hear these exchanges in the book between Hannah and Anna when they were little and Anna wants to be famous, right?

And to think that Anna was writing in that, writing in captivity, you know, for over 2 years, she was living in this prison, which was called, she called it the secret annex, this attic above her father's work.

But what's remarkable about her, you know, the first title of the diary was diary of a young girl.

She was 13 years old when she begins the diary.

She's, you know, just after, just as she gets it as a birthday present.

But she's 15 years old when about 9 months before she's arrested a minister from the Dutch government in exile based in London has a broadcast.

By the way, it's illegal to listen to this broadcast, but they're in hiding and they're listening to it.

And he says, Dutch people, save your diaries, save your letters, save any kind of first-person accounts of what this war time is like, because after the war, people are gonna wanna know and need to know how we survived this moment.

Everybody in the attic turns to Anna and says, you, your diary, you have to keep your diary for after the war.

And from literally that day forth, she starts revising her diary with an eye to it being published after the war.

So it's not just a diary, the musings, the blossomings of a 13 year old girl.

It's a 15 year old girl who's, as Ruti has said before, and as Hannah would always say, it was in a sort of a hothouse intense experience.

She sort of, her maturation increased exponentially because she couldn't go anywhere, right?

And she has this incredible depth of understanding and of her own, of self-awareness.

And she writes and in her editing is where the real genius comes out.

She sort of takes some things out, she moves things around.

She adds background about the anti-Jewish laws, for example, about what's going on.

And while she's writing in this diary, she's also writing about her beloved friend, Hannah.

But therefore a lot of people said, oh, there was no Hannah.

Because she changed, you know, there are some ways that it is written.

Frank saw that everybody is talking about this and he said, I will put everything inside, whatever she did, even if she wrote something about her mother and even she wrote even about my mother, my mother, that she had 2 left hands.

What's striking for me is that I think it's when they rather fortuitously meet while they don't see each other, but they hear each other in the concentration camps a couple of years later or so.

I think if my recollection serves me that Anna told Hannah that, look, we were in hiding for over 2 years.

That's a 13 year old girl, Anna Frank in the attic, not going outside at all.

Like it's again, when I put it through the lens of being a dad of kids, I think, well, I know what happens when a kid doesn't go outside for like 1 day.

But you know, in the Holocaust, people had gone over very, very worse than what happened in the attic, you know?

Because they were just suffering their life and humiliated and whatever.

So let's say in Israel, people say, okay, so she was not going out, but that's not the point.

Really, the point is what happened afterwards, what she suffered afterwards, the moment she was caught.

Yeah, of course, to live with this fear that you will be caught, It's very dreadful.

But then to be caught, it's much more worse.

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#378 Life Lessons From A Holocaust Survivor: Hannah Pick-Goslar (Anne Frank’s Best Friend)