Bep Voskuijl

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Bep Voskuijl , full name Elisabeth Voskuijl , later married. van Wijk (* July 5, 1919 in Amsterdam ; † May 6, 1983 ibid ) was one of the helpers of the Frank and van Pels and Fritz Pfeffers families when they tried to "go into hiding" to save themselves from the occupiers of the Netherlands hidden in today's Anne Frank House . In Anne Frank's diary , Bep Elly is mentioned.

Life

Origin and education

Bep was born in Amsterdam as the eldest daughter of Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl and his wife. Her seven younger siblings included u. a. her sisters Willy, Nelly and Diny. As members of the Dutch Reformed Church, she and her siblings attended Christian schools. After elementary school she first worked as a maid, later in a tailor's shop and a restaurant. According to her sister Willy, she did not like this job, which is why she took evening classes to become an office worker.

In 1937 she was hired as an office assistant in the Opekta company, the Otto Heinrich Franks company . At the age of 18, she was the youngest in the company. A little later, her father was also employed as a camp manager. In the company, Bep got to know the other, later helpers of the Frank family: Johannes Kleiman , Miep Gies and Victor Kugler , who, like themselves, were all employees of the Opekta and Pectacon companies. On July 16, 1941, she took part in the wedding celebration of Miep and Jan Gies .

Helper of the Frank family

When Otto Frank began to expand the company's secret annex as a hiding place, Bep initially knew nothing about it. According to her own statements, she saw that furniture was regularly brought into the building, but did not think about it. It was only inaugurated by Otto Frank at the end of June 1942 and, like her colleagues, she agreed to help the family. Those involved acted at risk of death as they faced the death penalty of the occupying power. Bep's job was to smuggle the milk delivered by the milkman in the office to the people in hiding in the Secret Annex. She also booked correspondence courses for Margot and Anne Frank under her own name. a. Shorthand and Latin . She often took meals with the people in hiding in the Secret Annex. In a 1960 interview she told the Dutch magazine Rosita :

“Once I stayed in the Secret Annex. In all honesty, I was terrified. As soon as I heard a branch creak or a car drive across the canal, I became scared. I was grateful when morning came and I could get back to work. Only now do I understand what the Frank family went through and what tension they must have lived under. "

Bep developed a very cordial relationship with Anne Frank, who was almost ten years his junior. Because of her father, who is suffering from cancer, and an unhappy love affair, Bep had a lot of worries and liked to talk to Anne. According to her own statements, Anne was like a younger sister to her, "sometimes almost motherly". Anne described Bep as "happy and cheerful, willing and good-natured". Although she never complied with Anne's request that one of her short stories be sent to a newspaper under her name, Bep regularly set aside carbon paper from her office inventory. She also gave her discarded clothes, as Anne quickly grew out of the things she had brought with her.

In July 1944, Bep was approached by Lena Hartog-van Bladeren, a cleaning lady from the company, whether she knew that Jews were hidden in the house. Her husband Lammert Hartog worked as a camp helper and she feared that, as a confidante, his life was also in danger. Bep immediately informed Victor Kugler, but they knew no alternative to hiding in the Prinsengracht. A little later, on August 4, 1944, Bep was there when the Gestapo came to arrest those in hiding. While they were in the Secret Annex, Kleiman secretly slipped his wallet into the broken up Bep and sent her away with a message to his wife. Bep told a druggist friend, whom she gave Kleiman's wallet to keep, that, contrary to the orders of the occupying forces, her colleagues had kept a radio and had been caught. After the Frank and van Pels families and Fritz Pfeffer were arrested and deported , she helped Miep Gies to preserve Anne Frank's famous diary.

Although Bep himself always suspected the camp manager van Maaren as a traitor to the Franks, there is also the possibility that her sister Nelly contributed to their discovery. In Bep's biography, written by Jeroen de Bruyn and Bep's son Joop van Wijk, it is mentioned that Nelly collaborated with the Nazis for four years, between the ages of 19 and 23. She is said to have said to her father and Bep once, "Then go, go to your Jews!", Although she officially knew nothing about them. The voice on the phone that told the Germans where they were hiding was also female. However, there is still no clear evidence.

post war period

Bep's father died in November 1945 and Otto Frank, the only survivor of the people in hiding, attended his funeral on December 1. On May 15, 1946, Bep married Cor van Wijk, with whom she had children Ton, Cor, Joop and Anne-Marie. She left Opekta a year after their wedding. In 1959 she testified at the Lübeck Regional Court and confirmed the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary. Bep kept in touch with Otto Frank for 35 years, but most of her correspondence with him is missing. De Bruyn and van Wijk suspect that the missing letters made reference to Nelly, whose collaboration was probably very painful for Bep. Otto Frank left her, just like Miep and Jan Gies, 10,000 francs.

In the course of the investigation against Lammert Hartog and his wife in 1948, Bep was not questioned as a witness, which Miep Gies described as a “gross mistake by the police”. Lena Hartog-van Bladeren withheld from the police that she had already known about the people in hiding in June 1944, but died a few months before the case was reopened. In the course of this investigation against the camp manager van Maaren, Bep testified as a witness in 1963, but was again not questioned about the Hartogs. Throughout her life she was very reluctant to give interviews about her time in the resistance.

She died of kidney disease at the age of 63.

Honor

In 1971, Bep Voskuijl was honored with the title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” in the memorial site of the Shoah , Yad Vashem , in Israel .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Bep Voskuijl on www.annefrank.org . Accessed September 21, 2017
  2. ↑ Dutch Author Says His Aunt May Have Betrayed Anne Frank . Forward , April 7, 2017. Accessed September 21, 2017
  3. ↑ a b : Ernst Schnabel: Anne Frank. Trace of a child. A report. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag 1997, p. 66
  4. ↑ : Melissa Müller: The girl Anne Frank. The biography. List Taschenbuchverlag 2000, p. 177
  5. ↑ : Melissa Müller: The girl Anne Frank. The biography. List Taschenbuchverlag 2000, p. 243
  6. ↑ : Interview with Bep (Dutch) . Accessed September 23, 2017
  7. ↑ : Ernst Schnabel: Anne Frank. Trace of a child. A report. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag 1997, p. 86
  8. ↑ : Melissa Müller: The girl Anne Frank. The biography. List Taschenbuchverlag 2000, p. 254
  9. ↑ : Melissa Müller: The girl Anne Frank. The biography. List Taschenbuchverlag 2000, p. 309
  10. ↑ : Ernst Schnabel: Anne Frank. Trace of a child. A report. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag 1997, p. 112
  11. ↑ a b : Who betrayed Anne Frank? . DutchNews.nl , April 7, 2015. Accessed September 23, 2017
  12. ↑ : Melissa Müller: The girl Anne Frank. The biography. List Taschenbuchverlag 2000, p. 391
personal data
SURNAME Voskuijl, Bep
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Voskuijl, Elisabeth (full name); van Wijk, Elisabeth (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch resistance fighter during the Second World War
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1983
Place of death Amsterdam