THE Holocaust, one of the biggest acts of genocide in modern history, is embedded in annals of time and the minds of its survivors.
It has also been immortalised in the diary of Anne Frank who, in her 15 years on earth, saw more pain, suffering and torture than anyone her age should have borne witness to, let alone experienced.
To this day the stories that emerged from the Nazi concentration camps between 1941 and 1945 still send a shiver down the spine.
Once again Frank’s life is revisited in National Geographic Channel’s latest undertaking, Anne Frank: The Nazi Capture.
While there is no dearth of material, this documentary features eye-witness testimony of that disturbing time. One of the accounts is from Frank’s childhood friend, Nanette Konig.
The eloquent manner in which the 84-year- old speaks, and her visceral recollection of surviving the Holocaust, belie her age.
Konig notes: “You need to understand. At the time – 1940 – the teachers/public servants were dismissed. And in 1941, they (the Nazis) asked the heads of schools the number of Jewish students they had and, based on this information, they started 25 Jewish schools in October 1941. It was done by the Amsterdam County. In other words, they obeyed orders.
“The school where I met Anna, there were two parallel classes. As it happened, I got into her class. In that particular class, due to the circumstance, as young as we were, we realised that we were living in difficult times and we were all ‘orphaned’.”
Konig has spent the better part of her life sharing her tale: “I give a lot of interviews and presentations. I think the more coverage we have, the better. I survived. I felt my survival should have a purpose and I wanted to tell the world what actually went on. I think it was also about doing it in the name of those who were killed – they needed to have a voice. The Holocaust was immense. It was the only genocide ever industrialised.”
How did she move past the emotional and psychological scars of the experience?
“With the Holocaust, you have to be able to cope with trauma because the human mind does not have a ‘delete’ button. So it will come up in the most unwanted moments. It is something you have to learn to live with. Otherwise, you can’t live, right? I made up my mind that I will speak, study and know more and be able to explain more.”
But first, she married and had a family.
“My husband was born in Hungary. He went to England when he was a child and did his full schooling in Britain. When we married, we moved to Brazil. I didn’t take a job. I felt leaving my children to a stranger, they would eventually find out what happened and it might give them an adverse reaction. When they found out there were no uncles, aunts, grandparents and so on, it was very hard. Some were more traumatised than others. Now they all know, but the trauma in the family will never go away.”
She eventually took up her studies when she was already a granny.
She offers: “I was a grandmother when I started my studies. My husband travelled a lot. When there was a free space of time, I went for an online course to get into university. I graduated in economics. And, later, I did a course in English-Portuguese translations.”
On Frank’s diary, she notes: “When she starts, she starts like a 12-year-old. When she finishes, she is very much mature. She has an opinion about the world. I was the only one of my class who met her again in (Nazi concentration camp) Bergen-Belsen. That was also sheer coincidence. I was in the small women’s camp, which was next to the large women’s camp. I saw her on the other side of the barbed wire. You couldn’t go near the barbed wire because you could get tortured or killed.
“But in February 1945, the barbed wired was taken away. And I went to look for Anna and met the two sisters. It was Anna who told me about Auschwitz, which I knew nothing about. She told me she was in hiding and it was her intention to use what she had written in her diary as the basis to write a book.
“She was very mature and would have certainly been an excellent writer had she been alive. To me, it is very emotional to talk about her and to see her the way I found her. She was wrapped in a blanket, she couldn’t wear her clothes because they were full of lice. She was in no condition to withstand the conditions rampant in the camp. She died four weeks before the British entered.”
Listening to Konig gave me goosebumps. And, with the filmmaker getting accounts from Nazi commanders too, it promises to be a compelling and heart-rending doccie.
• Anne Frank: The Nazi Capture premieres on National Geographic Channel tomorrow at 8pm.