Speech Ronald Leopold, Executive Director Anne Frank House

Speech Ronald Leopold, Executive Director Anne Frank House.
Peter van Pels & the KZ-Mauthausen Memorial, 6 November 2015
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On 10 August 1958 Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, receives a letter from the United States
from Greta Goldschmidt-Röttgen, Peter van Pels’s aunt (an older sister of his mother). At that
time Anne Frank’s diary and the play with the same name were a sensation in America.
Greta writes:
„Zweck dieser Zeilen ist, werter Herr Frank, bei Ihnen die Idee anzuregen, ob es nicht auch
was Gutes darstellte, wenn man für den ‚braven Peter‘ auch mal einen ‚Kleinen Hinweis‘
herausbringen würde.
Und einem 15jährigen Jungen, der sich so im KZ bewährt hat, wie Sie mir zur Zeit selbst
erzählt haben, der sich für andere so eingesetzt hat usw. usw., auch einen kleinen
Ehrenplatz einzuräumen.
Sicherlich, die fabelhafte, intelligente Anne verdient ‚all the limelight‘ – aber der kleine Bub
war doch so verbunden mit ihr und hat ihr sicherlich auch vieles erleichtert – warum nicht
auch mal ein kleines Lob für ihn!!
(…) ich denke zu oft an all die ‚Helden‘, die nicht das Glück hatten, ein ‚Tagebuch‘ zu
schreiben.“
Greta Goldschmidt, whose daughter died in Auschwitz, survives the war with her husband
and son and builds a new life in America. The letter is an understandable cry from the heart
of a woman, who like so many others at that time, wrestled with the incomprehensible loss of
loved ones in that immense sea of Holocaust victims.
Nobody is merely one of many, everyone is someone, with a name and a face. Peter van
Pels too, who died here in Mauthausen, lonely and alone, far from his home and family. Due
to Anne Frank’s diary we are here to tell his story.
Peter van Pels was born on 8 November 1926 in Osnabrück in Germany, the only child of
Hermann van Pels and Auguste van Pels-Röttgen. His family on his father’s side originally
came from the Netherlands. That is why Peter and his parents had Dutch nationality. Father
Hermann is a representative in the family business, a wholesaler in butchers’ requisites.
Peter van Pels is six years old when Hitler comes to power in Germany in 1933. He attends
the Israëlitische Elementarschule which is right next to the Osnabrück synagogue. Children
of different ages sit together in one classroom. A friend from that time says Peter was a tall,
shy boy and a good footballer. Football is played on the ground behind the school, with the
synagogue wall as the goal. The school is a safe haven for Osnabrück’s Jewish children. But
on the way to and from school they are sometimes called names and chased by members of
the Hitler Youth. The classroom becomes emptier and emptier, many families leave
Germany. Owing to the increasing Auswanderung Modern Hebrew is taught and there are
English courses for adults in the evenings.
The Van Pels family business can’t survive under the pressure of the Nazi government and is
forced to go into liquidation in the spring of 1937. Peter’s father Hermann no longer has a
means of livelihood. That summer the Van Pels family emigrates to the Netherlands and
settles in Amsterdam. Peter is then 10 years old. Nearly all of the members of his family on
both his father’s and mother’s side leave Germany at this time and go to Amsterdam,
including Greta Goldschmidt-Röttgen and her family.
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Many German Jewish immigrants live in the Amsterdam neighbourhood where Peter goes to
live. Before going to primary school, like many immigrant children, Peter goes to a special
class to learn Dutch. In 1939 his father goes to work as a herbs and spices specialist at
Pectacon, a business of Otto Frank. Hermann van Pels doesn’t feel safe from the threat of
National Socialism in the Netherlands. In 1939 he tries – unsuccessfully - to emigrate with his
family to America. Germany occupies the Netherlands in May 1940. Owing to the antiJewish measures that followed, Peter must leave school. He does a Jewish vocational
training course in upholstery. In the last known photo of Peter, he’s working on the springs of
a chair and wearing an overall with a Jewish star.
In July 1942, a week after the Frank family, Peter and his parents go into hiding in the Secret
Annexe at the business on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. The twenty-five months that the two
families and the dentist Fritz Pfeffer are in hiding there are described by Anne Frank in her
diary. Through the eyes of a teenage girl you read how the eight people in hiding share good
times and bad times together in the cramped conditions of their hiding place. Initially Anne
thinks Peter a ‘boring, shy lout’ but later they fall briefly in love. On 3 March 1944 Anne writes
in her diary: I sat down on the stairs, and we began to talk. Peter didn’t say anything more
about his parents; we just talked about books and about the past. Oh, he gazes at me with
such warmth in his eyes; I don’t think it will take much for me to fall in love with him. The first
thing that Peter wants to do after the war is go to the cinema, Anne writes. Later he wants to
visit the plantations in the Dutch East Indies. How different it was to be.
The period in hiding ends tragically on 4 August 1944 when the Annexe inhabitants are
arrested. Via the Westerbork transit camp in the east of the Netherlands, Peter ends up in
Auschwitz at the beginning of September 1944. There he sees how his father is sent to the
gas chambers after being selected at the beginning of October. Otto Frank, the only one of
the eight who hid in the Secret Annexe to survive the war, later said that Peter was a great
support to him in Auschwitz. Peter had more freedom of movement and could get extra food
because of his post job. When the Soviet army was approaching and Auschwitz evacuated,
Peter goes on one of the so-called ‘death marches’. According to Otto Frank, who stays
behind in the sick barracks, Peter is in a reasonable condition then and Otto was convinced
that Peter would survive.
On 25 January 1945 Peter van Pels arrives in Mauthausen and on 29 January he’s sent on
to the Nebenlager Melk where he does forced labour on the Quartz project to construct an
underground factory. The living and working conditions are inhuman, the death rate high. On
11 April 1945 Peter van Pels is sent back to the Sanitätslager of Mauthausen, where sick
prisoners are kept but without any care. It is really only a place to die. Peter van Pels died on
10 May 1945, five days after the American army liberate the camp. He is only 18 years old.
Today, as we approach his 89th birthday, 70 years after his death and 57 years after his
aunt’s letter, we have come together here in the Mauthausen Memorial to commemorate
Peter van Pels and unveil a plaque in his memory.
I would very much like to express my warm thanks and appreciation to everyone who has
contributed to this ceremony: Dr Barbara Glück (Head of Department IV/7 of the Federal
Ministry of the Interior and responsible for the Mauthausen Memorial), Mr Harald
Hutterberger (Manager of the Mauthausen Memorial), Mr Christopher Posch (Events and
Communications Manager of the Mauthausen Memorial), Dr Wolfgang M. Paul (Former
Ambassador and International Relations Representative of the Mauthausen Memorial), Mr
Marco Hennis (Netherlands Ambassador to Austria) and everyone else involved with the
organization of this meeting.
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The Italian writer and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi once wrote: “One single Anne Frank
moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces
remain in the shadows.” Peter van Pels was one of those who suffered like her and has
always remained in the shadows. His friend Anne’s dreams and ideals have captured the
world but we know little more of him than what she wrote about him and his tragic fate in
Mauthausen concentration camp. Today he steps out of the shadows, thanks to this plaque.
Zichrono livracha, of blessed memory.
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