What a unique and interesting look into more of the secrets of Anne Frank's annex, but given new life by the impact of that annex of its helper Bep Voskuijl. The story cannot have been easy to write;Bep shouldered weights far beyond what shoulders her age should've carried, and her family added even more secrets of their own to her frame.

This story is a must-read companion text for anyone who knows/is interested in Anne Frank, the Holocaust, or "helpers" during times of duress.

Overall: 4.5 stars

I'll tell my students about: sensitive subject matter

**Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the free ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.**

The Last Secret of the Secret Annex by Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl; Jeroen De Bruyn was hard to put down. I always am interested to learn more about Anne Frank and her family and the other people in the annex. Learning more about the brave people who risked so much to help them was eye opening. Such an important subject that always makes me wonder about the stories of others who were in similar circumstances. Reading about the author's aunt who may have given the family up to the authorities was surprising as I had never heard of this scenario.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Hi! I wanted to let you know that on page 180 of the netgalley version, there is a typographical error in the word betrayal. It shows betray-(infinity sign)l. I wasn't able to make the infinity sign work. I wanted to make sure that this got to you before publication, or perhaps it was already caught.

This book is amazing. I started it yesterday and I am already done. I haven't been able to put it down. I appreciate the opportunity that I have been given to be able to read this ARC, and know that this will be absolutely fascinating for those of us that are highly interested in historical texts and especially a view such as we received from Joop. Overall, I appreciated the insight that was given in the book, as well as his honest views of his own family life. I would love to read more if he publishes again.

I read a lot of WW2-era books, and I've always liked reading anything pertaining to Anne Frank, so I was excited to check this book out as it seemed like it'd be quite different from others I've read. The book seemed to be based more on opinion than facts, which wasn't what I expected. This is a book fans of Anne may want to check out, but some may be disappointed in the execution of the book, which is part biography and part memoir. The authors clearly show the difficult choices that had to be made at the time.

As a reasonably serious student of the Holocaust, I was already more than passingly familiar with the story of Anne Frank. Not withstanding this, there was much presented in this book that I was not previously familiar with. The Last Secret of the Secret Annex presents a rather new look at the events surrounding this piece of Holocaust history. Focused largely on the roles of those who provided aid to the Frank family and especially one lesser-known member of that group, van Wijk-Voskuijl and De Bruyn have written a highly readable and well researched account of this story. This includes a new (at least to me) theory of who might have turned the Frank family in to authorities and why - certainly one of the more enduring mysteries of Holocaust history.

To be sure, there is room for bias in the account based on van Wijik-Voskuijl's personal connection to Bep, the main focus of this book. And the concluding section of the book is a far more personal - and at times touching - account of that relationship. But I did not find that connection to be cumbersome while reading the book nor did it diminish the credibility of what was presented.

In short, I thought this book to be a good addition to the already copious amount that has been written on the subject of Anne Frank and would recommend it those interested in supplementing their understanding of this story.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.

Undoubtedly this book is being re-issued because of the popularity of the historically challenged book about the Franks that was released last year. So, if anything good came from that, this is it.
Wijk-Voskuijl is the son of Bep (Elli Vesson) from The Diary of Anne Frank, and his grandfather was the man who built the bookcase that hid the access to the Annex. One of Wijk-Voskuijl’s aunts worked for the Germans.
The part of the book that is going to get and has gotten the most attention is the possibility that one of Elli Vesson’s sister informed on the Franks. Wijk-Voskuijl and De Brunyn can’t really answer this question. There is simply no way to know. To simply say that the book is about this would be to do this work a severe injustice.
Part biography of Elli Vesson, part memoir, the book is about a woman, a family, and a nation coming to terms or trying to come to terms with what occurred during the Occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans during the Holocaust. This includes not just the large percentage of Dutch Jews that were murder (70%) but also the familial issues that are the result of the war.
While Vesson and her father aided the Franks, the rest of the family was kept by and large in the dark (or was supposed to be kept in the dark). The books co-authors do an excellent of detailing exactly how difficult and trying it was to get food for the Frank family as well as the stress that it must have laid on the helpers.
More importantly, Elli Vesson’s life after the war is detailed. The shadow of what happened to her friends hangs over her as does the war itself. This is compounded by the relationships that Vesson’s sister Nelly had with Germans, and one suspects the fear that Nelly betrayed the Franks.
It is important to note that Wijk-Voskuijl details the effect that his mother’s heroics have on his generation. There is the dynamic within the family, but also the impact on the next generation. When Wijk-Voskuijl meets and eventually marries his first wife, his parents are not supportive, largely because of his future mother-in-law’s perceived actions in wartime (she may have had relations with Nazis). IT is to the writers’s credit that they place themselves in the shows of people and examine the historical circumstances.
The idea of not knowing hangs over the book. The authors list the reasons why and why not Nelly might have been the one to betrayal the Franks, but there is no solid proof of guilt. There is the question of guilt because of the sister’s behavior during the war and the book chronicles how that unanswered question hangs in the air. And that is what this book is about - what comes after, how people go on.

I have been reading about Anne Frank since the first movie came out about her in 1959. I thought I knew everything about her and the time she spent hidden in the secret annex but I was wrong. This book is full of information that I had never heard about before in the authors' efforts to identify the person or persons who betrayed the Franks and their friends in hiding. The book is very well researched and the facts are well documented. I really enjoyed this book and all the new information I learned.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC of this very interesting book.

Fascinating read with a different perspective of the aftermath of the holocaust. The ripple effect it had on Bep’s family carried on throughout her life and passed on to her children was hard to read.
I did find the book to be more of opinion and theory based rather than cold hard facts to support the claims. I think this book would be better reclassified as- life with Bep post holocaust. The emotional trauma she went through is something I can’t imagine and the guilt would be more than many could handle.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This sorrowful but determined book examines the enduring question about Anne Frank”s Secret Annex; who betrayed the family, directly leading to the deaths of all but Otto Frank? Told by the son of Bep Van Wijk and a young, headstrong researcher who contacted him with a theory years ago, this book puts forth a new candidate, one much closer to the family and their helpers than previously imagined. The book shows how it might be possible that this last secret was kept so long, and at what cost. Anyone who has followed the story of the Annex for so long will be intrigued to read this book.

A very interesting new look at a story we all know and love. I really enjoyed the in depth look at the characters on the outside of the Annex. A must read for Anne Frank fans!

The Last Secret of the Secret Annex
By: Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl; Jeroen De Bruyn
Review Score: 4 Stars

Five Key Feels
-It was so interesting to learn about Bep.

-I loved all of the extra little things Bep did for the people in the Annex, like signing up for correspondence courses that Anne, Margot, and Peter were able to take.

-I wish there had been more information about Bep’s sister Nelly.

-I felt for Bep after the war, and understood why she struggled to talk about that time and what happened to the people who had been hidden in the Annex.

-This book really gave a fresh take to a powerful story.

———

The Last Secret of the Secret Annex was kindly provided as an ARC by Netgalley and Simon & Schuster. Thank you for allowing me to read this wonderful book!

Release Date: 5/16/23

I, like so many, have read The Diary of Anne Frank. I have had the privilege of visiting the Museum as well, and walked the small spaces that provided the shelter for the Frank family during World War 2.

I am always so interested in new information about this time, and this book was incredibly interesting. I loved learning more about Bep, as well as the other helpers of the Annex. I can’t imagine how stressful this time must have been for them.

I highly recommend this book, it is so well done.

#bookstagram #books #readingnow #boogiereadsbooks #fivekeyfeels #audiobooks #audiobook #nonfiction #arcreview #netgalley #thelastsecretofthesecretannex #simonandschuster #annefrank #thediaryofannefrank

Because of the controversy over the book published several years ago, in which the betrayal of the Frank family was supposedly investigated using modern forensic techniques, I wanted to read this book, which is sort of a rebuttal from the inside.

Joop van Wijk set out initially to write the story of his mother, who for the most part kept herself out of the long history of the publication of Anne Frank's writings. However, between the earlier book and the additional things he found out from family members, the effort grew until it became a somewhat larger story. I read the earlier book, but although I know it has been the subject of much criticism from experts in the field of the European Holocaust, I didn't really follow or delve into those disputes. I do remember thinking that they were a little selective as to when something did or did not count as useful evidence.

Given that family memories and stories are notoriously unreliable sources of truth, van Wijk and his co-author did everything they could to compare the things he was told with anything in the historical record that could help corroborate it, and he is clear about how the things he was told do or do not fit together. Because this book was the work of decades, he was able to speak to people who had first hand experience with 1940s Amsterdam who have been deceased now for years.

For the most part the book is gracefully written with a straightforward personal voice. Occasionally he departs from precise chronology and this can be disorienting, especially in the chapter where he discusses meeting his future wife.

The picture he creates is one of Bep Voskuijl's life being permanently damaged by the stress of caring for the secret residents of the Annex, only to see them hauled away and murdered anyway. Although anyone looking at the story from outside would say she is a hero, the crushing sense of failure with which she was left exacerbated the tensions in her marriage. Her husband thought that by telling everyone not to bring up the matter, he was protecting her from feeling her feelings, but we all know how that works.

The ongoing stress of the years from 1942-44 were only exacerbated by the tension in her family caused by her sister Nelly's ongoing collaboration with the Nazis. There seems to be no real reason for Nelly to have done the things she did, other than to rebel against and punish her father and oldest sister for the bond forged between them as helpers of the Franks. What is striking is the suddenness with which, after August 1944, Nelly was more fully cast out of the family. The day after the raid on the Annex, she came home from a few days with one of her German boyfriends, and her usually controlled father beat her up.

The previous book suggested that Otto Frank suddenly ceased pursuing justice for the betrayal of his family because he discovered the betrayer was Jewish. This doesn't really make a lot of sense, when you think about it, because it was hardly unusual or unknown for Jewish people to cooperate with the Nazis out of a misguided belief that it might save their lives and the lives of their families. Van Wijk suggests that he halted his efforts when it became clear that the betrayal might have come from Bep's own family and he did not want to bring opprobrium on those that had done the most for him, and to whom he remained close and supportive for the rest of his life. This actually seems more logical given the context.

Van Wijk's brief overview at the end of the book, of all the times Holocaust deniers tried to assert that Anne's writings were faked, is heartbreaking. For all the people who worked so hard and risked their lives to hide the Franks, to have to constantly respond to these demented accusations, seems like proof that no good deed goes unpunished. The growing tendency for people to not only want to avoid thinking about bad things, but to actively make it illegal for other people to learn about them, is reprehensible, and this book is another good reminder of what happened and how easily it could happen again, the more so if we pretend it didn't happen in the first place.

Thanks to Netgalley for letting me read an advance copy of this important book.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. It was fascinating to me to read about not only Anne Frank's family & their time in hiding, but also the family who helped hide them & hearing their story for the first time.

I can't even imagine what it would have been like growing up in that time period, but I loved reading about the closeness & commitment they had to each other. Bep showed great courage & worked so hard to keep the Franks & others safe. It's terribly sad that she never was the same after the war, but sadly this isn't the only example of this kind of trauma. It's sad that people need help & are afraid to ask for it, or unaware of resources that can help.

Heartbreaking to read about family issues that can't be solved....so much heartbreak in this world, even without war.

The authors are thorough in their research. They're blunt & honest and it's refreshing to read.

Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC!

(I was able to preview this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.)

I really enjoyed The Last Secret of the Secret Annex. From a research perspective, the work is extensively cited. Personal, familial accounts give a warmth to the work that is typically difficult to achieve in a historical text. I am suspect about the "last secret" the author solved but I commend him for acknowledging that at this point in time, it is extremely difficult to prove. The work veers off course when discussing current familial drama. I think a lead up and discussion of generational trauma and the impact on the younger generations may have worked a bit better in the book, but that would have been taking on too much. All in all, an interesting read that I would purchase for my library.

The history of the war in the Netherlands and the backgrounds of the Frank and Voskuijl families are woven together brilliantly in this book. There is enough detail to keep the story engaging without weighing down the book with too much information. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Anne Frank story from a new angle and sincerely hope the author finds the closure he seems to so desperately need. If you are interested in history, WWII, the holocaust, or true crime dramas you will enjoy this fresh take on a famous story.

*I received a free copy of this e-book from NetGalley and Simon & Schuster. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I agree with another reviewer that my feelings on this title are complicated. I went into this book very excited. I have had an interest in Anne Frank since I was in elementary school. My sister and mother were given the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank house, and did so... WITHOUT ME. I still may not be other that... but I digress.
I found this book to be very family dysfunctional.
I feel that it potentially would have gone better had it been written by a third party. In that, it seemed to give Nelly way too many cop outs. It did seem that she is the likely candidate for being the betrayer. But it leans toward a major error on the side of the family in that they were not only trying to save face for her, but for themselves. Bep definitely had life long struggles related to this decision, in my opinion.
The attempted suicide and the obvious omissions by Otto of Nelly...things you can learn about by reading the book.
Am I glad I read this book? Yes. Would I recommend this book to others who are Anne enthusiasts? Yes. However, be prepared to not necessarily agree with the way the narrative is executed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon&Schuster for the chance to read this book!

3.75/5 stars! Growing up, I was obsessed with the idea of who had led to the capture and murder of Anne Frank and her family. When I stumbled upon this book, I was really looking forward to reading it. I have complicated feelings about this book. I'm glad it exists and the writing style was great and readable. I'm left feeling conflicted over the almost apologetic levels of forgiveness in this book. The Holocaust was one of the worst moments in global history, so to make it seem like people that never paid for their crimes were easily forgiven didn't sit right with me. Just my feelings on it.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Simon & Schuster of “The Last Secret of the Secret Annex: The Untold Story of Anne Frank, Her Silent Protector, and a Family Betrayal,” in exchange for an honest review.

Written by Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn, this book focuses primarily on Bep Voskuijl—Joop’s mother—and her family both during and after World War II. The authors never come right out and say, “Bep’s sister Nelly did it! She’s the one that betrayed the Secret Annex!” And I understand why. There’s no “real” evidence that can be found, just bits and pieces. But when those bits and pieces are sewn together, it’s easy to see a pattern. The authors provided enough information “writing between the lines” to ensure that readers understood, without a doubt, that Nelly was guilty of the betrayal.

I’m familiar with “family secrets.” This a symptom of dysfunctional families. I’m not slinging mud here because my father’s own family is just as dysfunctional. For example, my father told me his “great grandfather was an Hungarian Jewish doctor”—but conveniently left out the fact that he was himself halachically Jewish. Certainly one could argue that he simply didn’t know as he wasn’t raised religious and was actually raised as a Protestant; that his own mother was raised as a Catholic. The point that I’m making is that in families like mine and Joop’s that were already dysfunctional to begin with, fascism fostered **even more** dysfunction. People just quit talking. They close ranks. And anyone that rocks the boat (like me and Joop) and doesn’t toe the line becomes an outcast.

Joop’s family hid Jews during World War II. My family was a mixture of non-religious Halachic Jews and Mischlinge who hid their ancestry during (and after) the war. As a result, I understand the high level of secrecy in the Voskuijl family and, in a way, feel a certain kinship to them. However, this is where the feelings of solidarity END. Why? Because the minute that the Voskuijl family learned that Nelly betrayed the Secret Annex, the entire Voskuijl family banded together and made their ‘family honor’ the priority at the expense of the **real victims**.

The authors try to make it appear as if Bep began to suspect her sister during the 1960s. If this is so, then why did her father viciously beat Nelly ***the day after the Annex was raided***? Why did Otto Frank just mysteriously write out the Voskuijl family out of the the first edition of Anne’s published diary?

I can forgive some family dysfunction. But what I can’t forgive is the fact that the authors are public apologists for Nelly. Throughout the book, the authors describe how Bep could never forget the people who ‘corrupted’ her sister (essentially placing the blame for Nelly’s behavior onto others); that when Nelly fell down a flight of stairs as an old woman, the author cried that he wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anyone (never mind that she was responsible for the horrifying deaths of 7 innocent people); on another occasion, the authors bemoaned how it was actually difficult not to “…feel a measure of pity…” for Nelly (after she spent all the money she got from Nazi’s for turning in Jews).

It’s a fact that 99.9% of the Holocaust’s perpetrators never paid for their crimes. I’m not just talking about major figures, but the everyday Joe’s and Jane’s who ransacked Jewish homes, the guards, the onlookers who laughed as Jews were being marched to their deaths, and etc. They were never punished. They got away with it. Plain and simple. Most of those people, like the Voskuijl’s, never talked about it. The act of not talking about something is bad enough. But actually going through the motions and physically covering up a crime is even worse.

The authors disclose how Bep and her father were never honored the way that Miep and Victor were, but at the end of the book, Bep made sure that her ‘secret letters’—probably to Otto rather than to a supposed lover—were burned prior to her death. The authors also recall how Bep tried to commit suicide, but never mention that this might be due to the fact that she was engaged in a criminal cover up and by this time, her conscience was eating at her. Bep, rightfully, wanted to avoid the spotlight. Of course, this never stopped her from accepting money from Otto Frank. The Voskuijl family wanted more recognition and more money than they got, but it’s a little hard to be a ‘savior’ when you’re covering up a war crime.

The whole family criminally collaborated to hide Nelly’s secret, becoming their own little private ODESSA. The family treated Nelly like a pariah, and rightfully so, but they were more interested in preserving the reputation of their family name. In doing so, they subverted justice.

The authors nearly weep over Nelly, but who weeps for the Franks, the van Pelses, and Fritz Pfeffer? The Voskuijl family was, and is apparently still, not interested in the real victims. They’re still too busy protecting poor old Nelly and the Voskuijl ‘family honor’. Even though the authors have laid everything out, they STILL want readers to feel sorry for that woman. Without an ounce of shame, they even used Anne Frank’s own words about Nelly to try to justify why people should feel pity for her. In doing so, the authors are, albeit unwittingly, still playing by the family’s so-called unwritten rules.

Should people read this book? Absolutely. It’s been nearly 80 years since the war ended, and fascism and nationalism are rearing their ugly heads again. Even after all of these years, people are STILL denying justice to victims of the Holocaust. I commend the authors for at least trying to tell the public about what happened. But they tempered this noble cause with the tendency to brush away responsibility from the person that was responsible for the crime of denouncement and from the people who knowingly covered it all up.

I just read this book in one day. It’s fascinating, factual, heart-wrenching, and honest. I’m a Humanities teacher and often feel like I’ve read everything in the English language there is available to read about Anne Frank. My interest began, as for so many, as a young girl who just happens to pick up her diary. It’s all downhill from there for some of us. We never can quite stop waiting and looking for Anne in one way or another. This book is not that. This book is very much about all that weighs upon the war generations and their children. The losses that must somehow be carried through life….the rifts and loyalties based in matters of ethics so deep they cannot even be talked about let alone explained. It’s about the complicated relationships we have as people no matter what and how the anxiety and neurosis birthed in war complicate the complicated deep into a dichotomy of existence where you’re trying to participate in the present while never having left the past. What can those in the present do? Try to join you in the past. It doesn’t work. They don’t belong there. So many questions left unanswerable but still…as this book assures…worth the effort of asking. A beautiful and personal story that adds so much to the legacy of all involved…which is everyone…there is not a soul upon this planet untouched by the Holocaust. Not. One. Soul. Thank you for this labor of love. May it being peace.

I received a copy of "The Last Secret of the Annex" from Netgalley in exchange for a book review. This book is by Joop Van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jerone DeBruyn. Joop is the son of Bep who was a friend of Anne Frank. She worked at the Warehouse where the Frank family hid in the upper building. Bep used to visit Anne and helped to sneak in food and other supplies. She befriended Anne and brought her notebooks and magazines. When the Frank family was betrayed by someone who tipped off the Nazis of the hiding place, Bep wonders who was the betrayer. She later suspected that her own sister Nellie may be one of the betrayers who tipped off the Frank families location.
It was not proven that The sister of Bep is the betrayer just suspected. As far as I know there is not proof of this just a fear from Bep her own sister could have betrayed the Frank Family. Joop writes of his mother and the years after the Holocaust she married, had children. spent many year in contact with Otto Frank. He even gave the family money over the years to help them during hard times. Joop eventually became estranged from his troubled mother. this is is account of what his mother told him of the Frank family. her friendship with Anne and Otto. A good and interesting book and theories of the betrayers to the Frank family.