Auguste van Pels

Auguste van Pels
File:Augustevanpels.jpg Auguste van Pels, July 1941
Born	(1900-09-29)29 September 1900 Buer, Germany
Died	March 1945 (aged 44) Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia
Nationality	German
Known for	The Diary of a Young Girl
Spouse	Hermann van Pels
Children	Peter van Pels

Auguste van Pels (29 September 1900 — March 1945) was a German-Jewish refugee who hid with Anne Frank during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary all names apart from those of the Frank family were changed to preserve the privacy of those mentioned. Auguste van Pels was assigned the pseudonym Petronella van Daan.

Life

The Gies family later assisted in the concealment of the van Pels family when they joined the Franks in hiding in the secret rooms in Otto, Hermann and Miep's office building on 13 July 1942.

Anne Frank's diary covers the twenty-four months the two families and Fritz Pfeffer spent in hiding, and Anne devotes much space to descriptions of the tension between Auguste and Hermann and her own ambivalent relationship with Auguste, including the fact that she and Mrs. Van Pels struggle in their relationship. It has been suggested that Auguste's flirtatiousness and exuberance were characteristics Anne disliked about herself and for that reason attracted much of her ire.

They remained hidden from the Nazis for two years. Auguste was arrested in hiding on 4 August 1944 with her husband and son, and the five other occupants of the hiding place, along with two of their protectors, and detained in the Euterpestraat Gestapo Headquarters before being transferred to the Amstelveenseweg prison until 8 August.

Both her date and place of death are unknown but witnesses testified that she was with the Frank sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen, but that she was not present when they died in February/March. She is therefore assumed to have been transferred before March 1945, to Buchenwald, then to the Theresienstadt ghetto. She is believed to have died either en route to Theresienstadt, or shortly after her arrival there.

For the cinematic dramatisation of the play based on Anne Frank's diary Shelley Winters won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Auguste (referred to in the film, as she was in the published version of the diary, as 'Mrs van Daan'). Winters donated her statuette to the Anne Frank House.

See also

• People associated with Anne Frank

References and further reading

• The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
• Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold
• The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee
• Roses from the Earth, Carol Ann Lee
• Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story, Anne Frank Foundation