After the Annex

On 27 January 1945 Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. At that point not only his journey home started, but also his long quest to find out what had happened to his wife Edith, his daughters Margot and Anne and the four other people with whom he had been in hiding in the Annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam: Herman and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. In the months after his liberation Otto Frank would discover that he was the only survivor out of these eight people. After the Annex continues the journey that Otto began. It is the ultimate attempt, based on thorough research in archives and available eye witness accounts, to reconstruct as precisely as possible what happened to the eight people in hiding after their arrest.

Bas von Benda-Beckmann is a historian and currently works as a researcher at the Anne Frank House. He is also the author of De Velser Affaire (The Velser Affair), shortlisted for the Libris history award, and the equally acclaimed Het Oranjehotel (Hotel Orange). After the Annex was researched and written in collaboration with Erika Prins, Esther Göbel and Gertjan Broek.