Anne Frank's Family Page 33

  Your Fritzi

  What Fritzi wrote comes from the bottom of my heart too and I don’t have much to add. Just as I sent a sum of money as a present for Pat when he was born, I am now doing the same thing for Oliver.

  Patrick Elias, around ten years old, 1976 (photo credit 18.1)

  I gave Papa Erich a check for 1,054.71 francs to deposit into an account for your second child. You’ll have to guess how I arrived at the amount.

  All my love and warmest greetings,

  Your Otto

  Buddy and Gerti no longer know what the sum meant, and don’t remember if they ever knew.

  They were happy. They had two children, and Buddy was getting good parts. He was especially successful in a musical version of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, playing multiple roles, including Old January, an old man who gets it into his head to marry the youngest girl in the village. As the date approaches, though, he is overcome with fear about how certain things will go on their wedding night, and someone calms his nerves by giving him an aphrodisiac. Jazz music starts to play, and Old January starts to dance. It was a part that could have been written especially for Buddy. Of course the old man has to pay dearly for his second youth, and he is soon cuckolded by his young wife. Buddy would later be hired for The Canterbury Tales in London and Stuttgart, and after Bremen came an engagement in Mannheim, where, as Gerti says, he lived more at the theater than at home, playing one lead role after another. Kurt Hübner brought him from Mannheim to Berlin, where he performed at the Freie Volksbühne, at the Renaissance Theater, and elsewhere. They would spend twelve years in Berlin, interrupted by a several-month run of The Canterbury Tales in London in 1979, where Gerti would visit him with the children. Buddy was in Stuttgart for several months as well, then returned to Berlin. Gerti stayed in Berlin and worked hard to give her children “a comfortable home” and always be there for them. She knew that with all the rehearsals and performances Buddy didn’t have very much time for his sons, so she only occasionally took on any theater work herself.

  As the years went by, Buddy Elias performed onstage with many of the most famous actors in the German-speaking world, for example with Will Quadflieg in Nathan the Wise, Horst Buchholz in Twelve Angry Men, Maximilian Schell in Poor Murderer, and Harald Juhnke as Motel in Dreyfus, directed by Helmut Käutner.

  Oliver Elias, around five years old, 1976 (photo credit 18.2)

  Buddy also performed in several movies, including Peter Lilienthal’s David, Hans W. Geissendörfer’s Magic Mountain, and Michael Verhoeven’s Mother Courage.

  Buddy and Gerti traveled often to Basel, of course, but they also went to see Gerti’s family in Oberhaag, and little Patrick especially loved it there. As Buddy wrote once: “For Pat it’s a real paradise here.” But the family visited Buddy and Gerti much more often than Buddy and Gerti visited Basel, attending Buddy’s premieres in Bremen, Mannheim, Berlin, and Stuttgart. Gerti says: “It was unbelievable how much Otto shared Buddy’s life and his successes. Until the very end, when he was too sick to travel, he and Fritzi came to Buddy’s performances, often to the premieres. And they always wrote letters.”

  Otto kept Buddy informed about the three lawsuits he filed in Germany against people who called his daughter’s diary a for gery. The first time, he brought charges against an English teacher from Lübeck, member of the far-right German Reichspartei, and one of his fellow party members, for slander, insult, libel, defaming the memory of the dead, and anti-Semitic hate speech. Both men withdrew their statement, and Otto Frank agreed to an amicable settlement. He would later regret his decision, saying: “If I had known that there were people who would not consider a settlement as proof, I would probably have gone ahead with the trial.”

  Otto Frank filed charges again in 1976 against an architect from Odenhausen who had self-published numerous neo-Nazi brochures and flyers, such as Anne Frank’s Diary: A Forgery and Anne Frank’s Diary: The Big Hoax. The architect was forbidden to make or spread these or any other such claims in public on penalty of a fine of up to 500,000 deutsche marks ($200,000). He appealed, but it did not come to a further judicial decision, since the man died before another trial.

  A third lawsuit in Germany, with Otto Frank as a co-plaintiff, lasted from 1976 until 1993, thirteen years after Otto’s death. It started when a member of the radical right handed out flyers titled Bestseller: A Fraud after a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank. He was sentenced by the Hamburg District Court in 1977 to pay a fine of 1,500 deutsche marks ($600) for defamation, and he appealed. During the proceedings, a like-minded comrade distributed the same flyer in the courtroom. The appeal process dragged on so long because the judge wanted to wait for the German translation of the scholarly edition of the diary to come out, and in the end the case was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. Buddy and Gerti say how much these cases depressed Otto—how the charges of forgery hurt him and how terrible it was for him to have to go before a judge and show the tattooed number on his arm in front of everybody.

  But they have happy memories of Otto Frank too. Buddy says: “I can’t forget this other time when he and Fritzi were in Sedrun, on a winter vacation, and we visited them there. He was already a very elderly man. When we went out one evening, there was jazz music and people started dancing. Otto stood up and danced with Fritzi; they pulled off a terrific swing dance. Everyone watched, and Otto was the star of the dance floor. It was unbelievable, really incredible.”

  Buddy Elias with Maximilian Schell in Poor Murderer by Pavel Kohout, Renaissance Theater, Berlin, 1982 (photo credit 18.3)

  In the summer of 1980, while Buddy and Gerti were living in Berlin, they received the news that Stephan was sick. At first it seemed that he had suddenly caught jaundice, then there was talk of another sepsis. Gerti went to Basel—Buddy couldn’t get away, given his many rehearsals and performances—and had Stephan transferred from a clinic in the Basel district to the university hospital. There they said it was a suppuration of the biliary duct and operated immediately. Gerti went back to Berlin. Buddy would have time off in August, and they wanted to go to Basel first, then to see Gerti’s family in Oberhaag and spend their holiday there.

  Just before their departure, though, they got the call that Otto Frank had died, on August 19, 1980. The news hit them unexpectedly hard, even though he had been in poor health for quite some time and they had to be prepared for it. They arrived in time for the funeral, which took place on August 22 in Birsfelden with many mourners in attendance, including Fritzi’s daughter, Eva, who came from London with her husband, Zvi Schloss, and their three daughters.

  The night after the funeral, they were together again in the house on Herbstgasse: Erich, Leni, Herbert, Buddy, and Gerti. Fritzi, Eva, and Eva’s family had stayed in Birsfelden. Leni said little, as if paralyzed, while Herbert was the opposite: he was utterly broken and kept saying over and over, “What are we going to do without him? How can we go on?”

  “He was generous,” Erich said, “a good person. He loved to give.”

  Buddy reached for Gerti’s hand. They both thought back to when they had wanted to travel to Israel, years before. Fritzi and Otto had come by to give them a few tips before the trip and some addresses. They were sitting in the dining room, and Mariuccia had just cleared the table, when Otto gave Buddy and Gerti a signal to follow him into the salon. He carefully shut the double doors before taking a wad of cash out of his pocket and pressing it into Buddy’s hand. “Quick, put this away,” he said with a meaningful nod toward the door. Buddy stuck the money into the inner pocket of his jacket. They both understood what Otto meant—Fritzi didn’t need to know. She was always on the thrifty side, and this quality grew more pronounced as she got older. Otto had given them two thousand francs, which was a lot of money, more than they themselves had set aside for the trip.

  “Yes,” Buddy said, “he was a good person. We will never forget him.”

  They visited Stephan, who was still not doing well. He was on
an artificial respirator. But the doctor said that his condition was stable, considering the circumstances, so Gerti and Buddy left for Oberhaag with Patrick and Oliver, where the news reached them three days later that Stephan had died. Patrick, who had an especially close and special relationship with Stephan, ran out into the fields when he heard that his favorite uncle had died and reappeared only many hours later.

  They returned to Herbstgasse. They had lost two loved ones within the space of a few days.

  François Fricker, a good friend of Stephan’s, gave the following eulogy at the funeral:

  Dear Elias family, dear friends,

  In the night of August 19th to 20th, one week ago, Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, passed away. Four days later, on Sunday, August 24, at 3:15 p.m., his nephew, our dear Stephan Elias, followed him in death.

  Although both of these events are equally sad, we might be tempted to view them rather differently. Otto Frank died in his 91st year, while our Stephan, whom we are here to remember today, was only 59. An age that seems much too young to us, according to the prevailing view. To put it another way: the unavoidable fate we all share has here, it may seem, taken a very unusual course, and so this death seems to be a tragedy.

  Nevertheless, I have to say that this line of thought is not entirely correct. As a very, very close friend of Stephan’s, I know for a fact that the one thing he absolutely never wanted was to grow old. Whatever the motivation for this wish might have been, Stephan expressed it again and again, and now it has unexpectedly been fulfilled.

  After a routine operation on June 15, due to jaundice, there were unexpected complications. Only twelve days later his condition was critical, a fact of which Stephan was perfectly aware.

  Reliable studies show that patients can often evaluate, almost instinctively, their difficult situations completely realistically, even if they lack specialized medical training. So it was probably clear to Stephan that should he survive he would have to reckon with certain restrictions in his quality of life, and that he would require assistance in his daily life, even if not constantly. A thought that was surely unbearable to Stephan.

  For even though he was always extraordinarily eager to help everyone else, in the other direction he never wanted to cause the slightest inconvenience for anyone.

  As a result, the following became crystal clear to all of us who were at his side during his wavering between life and death (starting on June 27, he was continuously in intensive care):

  The common wisdom, that as long as there is life in a dying man there is hope and that we therefore have to extend a person’s life irrespective of its quality, can have consequences contrary to morality and human dignity.

  … My dear Elias family, it may be surprising to you to hear me stand here today and utter such reflections. On the other hand, these thoughts are not ones that I can simply suppress, because they arose from my daily visits and conversations with the sick and dying Stephan … Looking back, I feel that it was a great mercy that I could accompany Stephan, together with his parents, during the last five hours of his earthly life…

  The Stephan who had an unbelievable instinct for spontaneous puns and wordplay is known to all of us … I will quote a small example here that shows how Stephan could juggle with words: during one of his frequent visits to his dearly beloved and admired brother, Buddy, sister-in-law, Gerti, whom he was so proud of, and nephews, Patrick and Oliver, about whom he was always telling stories—during one of these visits to Berlin, a friend of the family’s came by and was introduced to him, one Frau Saile. Stephan noticed lightning fast what nobody had realized until then, that the name Saile is Elias spelled backward…

  I mentioned earlier Stephan’s nephews, Patrick and Oliver, but that was in no way to neglect his nine-year-old goddaughter, Claudia … When Claudia heard the news of her godfather Stephan’s death, she burst into tears. Her eight-year-old sister, Ariane, whom Stephan always tacitly saw as a second godchild, did not. She said, “God had the right to take Stephan back. Because Stephan made so many people happy. And now God should have Stephan to make him happy too.”

  After the speech, another friend of Stephan’s, Ferdinand Afflerbach, played reveille on the drums, and when he stopped in the middle of the melody, a cold shiver ran over Gerti’s spine.

  On the evening of October 5, an official memorial service for Otto Frank took place in Basel, which Buddy and Gerti could not attend, because Buddy was not given time off from the theater. Still, they later found in the cache of documents a moving statement from Fritzi about her marriage to Otto Frank. The statement is undated, and it is not known if she read it out loud at this or another memorial service. It bears the title “My Life with Otto Frank.”

  It began in Auschwitz. Back in February 1945, when the Russians took the camp after the Germans withdrew, the surviving ex-prisoners were ordered to gather together to honor a day of remembrance for the revolution. I noticed a man with a small head who was shepherding some of his sick and weakened comrades and lovingly taking care of them.

  I met him later on the transport back to Holland. It was Otto Frank, who took it upon himself in Amsterdam to visit the Jews who had returned or come out of hiding and offer them his advice and support. He visited the two of us as well—my daughter and me. And I had the chance to get to know his extraordinary qualities, his great humanity, for seven years. In 1953 we were married, and the following 27 years were among the happiest of my life.

  Otto Frank was a very special person. He had charisma. Everyone who was lucky enough to meet him would confirm what I am saying. Every one of our countless visitors would mention, in writing or verbally, how friendly he was and how sincerely he welcomed them.

  He never wrote a book, but the thousands of letters he wrote to friends and to readers of Anne’s diary, many of whom became friends in turn, are a monument in themselves. They contain his immense understanding, for young and old, and express his great love of humanity, and his goodness. Practically every recipient wrote to say that they treasured his letters as a unique and prized possession. This voluminous correspondence took up a lot of his time and energy, but he knew only too well how important a friendly written word can be in a world where so few people take the time to be considerate or compassionate. It was his life’s work to spread the ideas and ideals that Anne had expressed in her diary, and he gave courage to many people, especially young people, when they were unhappy. Not a few of them have had their paths in life changed, for the better, thanks to him.

  The Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam, which he and several prominent citizens of Amsterdam founded, incorporated this goal among others into its statutes. Otto Frank spent many years working intensively with the foundation. It was a satisfaction to him to learn that an organization of friends of this foundation has now formed in the U.S.A.

  He took people seriously no matter what social class they belonged to. He had a personal word to say to every waitress or bank clerk. He once put his arm around an Italian porter’s shoulder like an old personal friend. Honors and riches meant nothing to him, for him there were only “people,” whom he wanted to help in whatever way he could.

  He had a special love for young people and he would soon become a father figure, later a grandfather figure, for countless boys and girls who gave him their trust and with whom he would continue to correspond for many long years.

  Otto also possessed a well-developed sense of family. And so I was very happy to see that he saw my daughter as a blood relative along with his brothers and sister and treated her as another of his children. He also loved the three grandchildren with his whole heart, which they repaid with great affection.

  He was an optimist and hate was entirely foreign to him. As early as 1946 he traveled to his hometown of Frankfurt to look for two old German friends, who he knew had not been Nazis. He wanted to show that from his perspective there was no such thing as collective guilt. He certainly said that we must never forget Hitler’s and his thugs’ cri
mes against the Jews, but hate doesn’t get us any further. He was committed to reaching out the hand of forgiveness to German youth.

  I learned a lot from him, and it was enormously enriching for me to work for peace and international understanding, as I did at his side for all those years. Otto Frank was a stimulating personality. Almost to the very end, he took a lively interest in events all over the world. He was especially interested in Israel, where we often visited. The children on the kibbutzim and in the children’s villages ran after him as if he were the Pied Piper, since he gave off a warmth and kindness even without words that enchanted young and old. He was very concerned about Israel. He vehemently defended its right to exist despite not always agreeing with its political positions, although he understood those positions to some extent, in light of the deadly threat the country is under. He was not an especially religious person, coming from his liberal cosmopolitan milieu, but due to the events of the age he became more conscious of his being a Jew. Cooperation between the great world religions, especially Christian-Jewish cooperation, lay close to his heart. He was a member of many different groups with ecumenical and reconciliatory goals.

  He carried prayers of different religions in his wallet and it was his wish to have them all read at his funeral. That happened. I will end with one of these prayers. His good friend Rabbi Soetendorp read it at the Sabbath service:

  Let us commemorate those whom we loved.

  Those who were taken from us and have gone to permanent rest.

  May everything good that they have done,

  Every truth and goodness that they spoke be recognized to the full and may it direct our life accordingly.

  Because through that the living award the dead the greatest honor and they are spiritually united with them.

  May those who mourn find comfort and be uplifted by the strength and trust in this worldly spiritual power