On June 15, 1942, days after receiving a diary for her 13th birthday, Anne Frank wrote that a classmate she had only recently met “is now my best friend.”
She and that friend, Jacqueline van Maarsen, promised to write each other goodbye letters if they were forced apart — which came to pass just weeks later. Frank went into hiding in Amsterdam in July, and wrote van Maarsen her farewell letter in the diary in September, wishing that “until we see each other again, we will always remain ‘best’ friends.”
That meeting never took place, as Frank was murdered by the Nazis in 1945. But beginning in 1986, van Maarsen began lecturing on the Holocaust and hate, and writing about her friendship with Frank.
On Friday, the Anne Frank House announced that van Maarsen had died on Feb. 13, at age 96.
“Jacqueline was a classmate of Anne Frank at the Jewish Lyceum and shared her memories of their friendship throughout her life,” the institution, which is the official custodian of Frank’s legacy, said in a statement that included details about the friendship. “In her books and during school visits, Jacqueline spoke not only about her friendship with Anne but also about the dangers of anti-Semitism and racism, and where they can lead.”
Van Maarsen was the daughter of a Jewish father and a mother who was raised Christian and converted to Judaism. Her mother managed to get her and her sister declared non-Jewish in 1942, which enabled them to survive the war and Holocaust. Most of van Maarsen’s father’s family was killed by the Nazis.
After the war, she got married, had three children and worked as an acclaimed bookbinder. Later in life, she wrote multiple books about Frank, including 2008’s “My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank.”
Van Maarsen stayed in touch with Frank’s father, Otto, and with the Anne Frank House. In 2020, she laid the first stone of a Holocaust monument in Amsterdam. Last year, she donated a book of poetry from her youth to the institution. It included a poem written by her friend Anne.
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