Holocaust survivor and author Hannah Pick-Goslar died on October 28, 2022, in Jerusalem. She was 93.
Pick-Goslar told her story to her ghost writer Dina Kraft shortly before passing away. Her memoir titled 'My Friend Anne Frank' will be published on Anne Frank’s birthday in June 2023.
Talking about Pick-Goslar's death, Dina Kraft said, as reported by The Bookseller, "I vividly remember feeling bereft after finishing reading Anne Frank’s diary when I was a girl. The loss felt real, as if I had lost a friend. And now I have had the profound privilege of helping tell the story of Hannah, one of Anne’s closest friends, which is, in part, the story Anne did not survive to tell. In the process I found a new friend in Hannah, who I now miss and mourn.
“Yet I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to interview and work with her at what turns out to have been, just in time. Her loss is a stark reminder we are losing Holocaust survivors every day, making the task of preserving their stories ever more urgent. As I stood by her freshly dug grave Saturday night, after hundreds had come to pay their respects to this remarkable woman, I searched for a stone to press on it, per the Jewish custom of remembrance. Instead of one, I placed three stones, one for myself, one for her parents, and the other for Anne and her other friends."
Remembering Pick-Goslar, a statement on AnneFrank.org read, "We were sad to learn of the death of Hannah Pick-Goslar at the age of 93. Hannah, or Hanneli as Anne called her in her diary, was one of Anne Frank’s best friends; they had known each other since kindergarten.
"On 14 June 1942, Anne wrote in her diary: ‘Hanneli and Sanne used to be my two best friends. People who saw us together always used to say: “There goes Anne, Hanne and Sanne.”’ Hannah shared her memories of their friendship and the Holocaust into old age. She believed everyone should know what happened to her and her friend Anne after the last diary entry. No matter how terrible the story."
Pick-Goslar would have turned 94 in just two weeks.
