A short poem by Anne Frank written in Amsterdam in 1942 and autographed by the teenager is expected to fetch up to €50,000 (£44,000) at auction.
The handwritten eight-line poem was written in the “poezie album”, or friendship book, of the older sister of Frank’s classmate and best friend Jacqueline van Maarsen, according to Dutch auction house Bubb Kuyper. The first four lines of the poem can be found in a 1938 periodical, but the next four are not traceable, said Bubb Kuyper, which has put a guide price of €30,000 to €50,000 on the poem.
“My sister (nicknamed Cricri) tore this page out of her poezie album and gave it to me around 1970,” writes Jacqueline van Maarsen in a letter accompanying the poem. “I know that my sister was not as attached to this verse from Anne to her as I am to the verse Anne addressed to me, and that is the reason that I am now putting it up for sale.”
Signed by Frank, the poem “is a typically edifying poem of the sort that was often written in poezie albums, exhorting the owner to do her best and be diligent at work, so that anyone who reproves her is answered in an honourable manner,” said the auction house.
The poem is dated 28 March 1942. By July that year, Anne’s parents would take the family into hiding in an annexe by Otto Frank’s office, where Anne would write the diary that would make her posthumously famous. The Frank family remained in hiding until 1944, when they were arrested and taken to Auschwitz. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, at the age of 15.
