Hello dear readers.
So I'm almost finished with the transcript from my interview with Ms. Slepian. Please be a tad bit more patient with me. Hopefully I will have an entire post on our conversation tomorrow (hopefully).
I totaled up the hours of my research, and I'm pretty sure it adds up to a little over 11 hours. That's awesome and should hopefully get me an "A" in that part of the assignment.
So today I will talk about the final member to come to the Annex and it's helpers. First off, Fritz Pfeffer (and yes that is how you spell his name).
Fritz Pfeffer came to the Annex in November of 1943. He was a dentist back before the Nazis told Jews they could now longer own businesses. He was also engaged! Her name was Charlotta Kaletta and they had a proxy marriage or whatever it's called, since there was also the law that Jews could not marry non-Jews. It was kinda sad actually. Charlotta didn't know he had died in the camps until a few years after the war ended. She died in 1988 (I think).
Fritz, as you might know, also shared a room with Anne the rest of those two years. In her diary, Anne called him Mr. Dussel which translates to stupid in German. She really did not like him at all really. And it was vise versa.
They had set times for who got the one desk in the room and when. There were often arguments over who should have more time and who got it when. Once Anne even used her father against Pfeffer to get her more time to write in her diary.
Another interesting tidbit is that he would write love letters to Charlotta and she would write back with Miep Geis as their carrier. It was very sweet. The day Fritz came to live with the Annex members, Anne tried to be kind and talk to her new roommate. She noticed the picture he had put on the desk of Charlotta and asked him about it. He then obliged her with a short story about her and who she was to him.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, one of the helpers of the Secret Annex is Miep Geis and her husband Jan. (I first thought that Jan was a girl, but that was quickly put to rest). Miep and Jan were co-workers and good friends of Otto and Hermann. They were trusted enough to help the Franks and the van Pels go into hiding. Incidentally, after the war, Otto lived with the Geis' for quite a few years until he remarried. (BTW Otto Frank got remarried. Sorry for the spoiler. More on that topic later.) Miep was also the longest living helper from the Annex. She died at 100 years old in 2006. (? Someone should probably check that.)
Another helper was Victor Kugler. He was arrested along with the Annex members by the Gestapo, but he survived the concentration camps and ended up living in Canada until he died in 1981. He was also arrested with Johannes Kleiman. Johannes was also a helper, friend, and co worker of the Annex members. I don't know much about him though....... sorry guys.
Anyways, thats all for today. But I'll get on bright and early tomorrow. Say sometime after noon? I don't wake up till then on weekends anyway.
So sayonara and our-feet-are-the-same (say it fast and it sounds like German for good-bye).
Mariah
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