The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

Seven different women were interviewed by author Willy Lindwer to create this book, recalling their experiences in the Westerbork transit camp and the Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during WWII, as well as their separate meetings with fellow prisoner Anne Frank and her family.


All seven women recalled their experiences of being treated inhumanely by the Nazi during their interviews. It's really hard for me to re-tell the hardship they went through. The more I read, the more I could see how Anne Frank, her sister Margot and mother Edith went through the same thing. The shaving of their hair, the lack of clothing, the roll calls, the work, the lack of hygiene, the hunger, the cold, the failing of health, the constant expectation of death, the missing will to live. Both sisters died from typhus just several days apart and a few weeks before the camp was liberated.

While the book provided bits and pieces of information from the survivors about the last moments of Anne Frank, made famous by her diary during her hiding from the Nazi, it was more about the women being interviewed. These were first-hand accounts of the horror of the Nazi's antisemitism. Based on their testimonies, it's amazing that they survived at all.

Those who read the diary should read this book, as a follow-up of Anne Frank's life, even though some of the accounts were few and far between. While the lack of detailed accounts may come as a disappointment for some, one should not forget that this book is beyond our favorite diarist. It's about the concentration camp survivors themselves.