The Last Secret of the Secret Annex

(Paperback, Export/Airside)

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Description

The extraordinary, never-before-told story of Bep Voskuijl, Anne Franks closest friend during the 761 days she spent in the Secret Annex.

Bep was just twenty-three when the Franks went into hiding and she risked her life to protect them, plunging into Amsterdams black market under the noses of German soldiers and Dutch spies to source food and medicine for the Annex. In those cramped quarters, Bep and Annes friendship blossomed. As this book reveals, while she was sharing meals with Anne Frank, Beps sister Nelly whose name was scrubbed from Annes published diary was collaborating with the Nazis.

Written by Beps own son, The Last Secret of the Secret Annex interweaves her story with Anne Franks and Nellys to show us the Secret Annex as weve never seen it before. We follow Bep after the war as she struggles to build a life in the shadow of her past, unable to get over losing Anne nor put to rest the horrifying suspicion that she had been betrayed by her own flesh and blood.

Captivating and unsettlingly suspenseful, The Last Secret of the Secret Annex is a portrait of ordinary families caught between the victims and persecutors, in which collaborators and resisters often lived under the same roof. With a moving mother-son relationship at its heart, it explores how historical trauma is inherited from one generation to the next, and how sometimes keeping a secret hurts far more than revealing a shameful truth.

Author Bio

JeroenDeBruyn wasborn in 1993 in Antwerp. At age fifteenthe same age as Anne when she died of typhus in theBergen-Belsen concentration campJeroenbegan doing original research on the Secret Annex. He got to know the Anne Frank House firsthand during an internship there in 2011. He went on to study journalism, subsequently contributing toprominent Flemish news magazines likeKnack and Joods Actueel, and working as a senior editor for the major Belgian newspaperGazet van Antwerpen.