In 1942 Anne Frank wrote in the poetry album of Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen: “Keep a ray of sunshine/ at school a nice child/ for me my sweetest girlfriend/ then you will be loved by every one”.
Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen was a good friend of Anne Frank, and classmate at the Jewish Lyceum. Sanders-Van Maarsen died Thursday at the age of 96, reports the Anne Frank Foundation.
Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen was born in Amsterdam on January 30, 1929 as the daughter of a Jewish father and a French mother who had converted to Judaism to be able to marry Jacqueline’s father. Jacqueline had an older sister, Christiane, whom she called “Cricri.”
Sanders-Van Maarsen met Anne Frank in 1941 when she had to go to the Jewish Lyceum because of the Nazi occupation from the public school. “She is now my best friend,” Anne Frank wrote about her in her diary on June 15, 1942.
From her hiding place in the back house, Anne Frank wrote a farewell letter in her diary on 25 September 1942. “I hope we will see each other again soon, but it will probably not be before the end of the war. (…) Your ‘best’ girlfriend Anne. PS I hope that until we see each other again, always ‘best’ friends remain, “the letter said. The letter was not sent. That was too dangerous.
Non-Jewish
In 1942, Jacqueline’s mother managed to have herself and her daughters noticed as non-Jewish. She had said before that her husband and the children had her knowledge to register as ‘Jewish’. That was wrong, but it did save the family: they survived the war, including the father. Most family members of the father did not survive the concentration camps.
Anne Frank and her sister died in the spring of 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, probably the effects of typhus.
Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen worked as a bookbinder after the war. In 1954 she married Ruud Sanders. They had three children. With the father of Anne, Otto Frank, who was the only one of the Frank family to survive, Jacqueline kept contact until his death in 1980.
Silver griffel
The friendship between Anne and Jacqueline only became public after the publication of her book Anne and Jopie In 1990. She felt it as her duty to “write for her who could no longer write”. After Anne and Jopie three other books followed, including Your best friend Annethat was awarded the Zilveren Granger in 2012. In her books and during her visits to schools, Jacqueline told about her friendship with Anne. And she warned of anti -Semitism and racism.
The Anne Frank Stichting thanks Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen. “We could always appeal to her, even when she was already in old age,” the foundation writes on its website. On 12 June 2019, on Anne Franks 90th birthday, Jacqueline was together with former classmate Albert Gomes de Mesquita in Anne Frank’s former house on Merwedeplein. There they were also thirteenth birthday on Annes, three weeks before Anne went into hiding with her family in the back house. Jacqueline and Albert, 77 years later, recalled memories and talked to young people about Anne Frank’s life and meaning.