Hermann van Pels
Hermann van Pels (31 March 1898–October 1944) was a German-Jewish refugee who hid with Anne Frank and her family during the occupation of The Netherlands by Nazi Germany, and who was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp after they were betrayed to the Gestapo. When Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947 the names of all those mentioned apart from those of the Frank family were changed. Van Pels was given the pseudonym Herman van Daan.
Hermann van Pels was born on 31 March 1898, the third of six children born to Lina Vorsänger and Aron van Pels in Gehrde, German Empire. He married Auguste Röttgen (born 29 September 1900 in Buer) on December 5 1925 and their son Peter was born (on 8 November 1926) in Osnabruck.
Hermann and his sister Ida van Pels joined the family meat seasoning business just before the family were forced to sell it at a huge loss in 1933 under the newly-introduced Nazi Jewish possession laws. Their sister, Henny Marx-van Pels (30 March 1895–17 September 1943) took her dressmaking business to Amsterdam in 1935 and Hermann, Gusti and Peter followed in June 1937. Following his arrest on Kristallnacht in 1938, Van Pels's father, Aron returned to the Netherlands, where he was born, and lived with Henny until his death in December 1941.
Three of the Van Pels siblings, Max, Ida, and Meta van Pels all fled Europe for the United States and Chile before the outbreak of war. But the three others remained in Amsterdam until it was occupied by the Wehrmacht and escape became impossible. Henny died in Auschwitz in 1943, and her sister Klara Neumann-van Pels (31 August 1900–30 April 1943) was gassed in the Sobibór extermination camp.
The Van Pels and Frank families were neighbours, living back to back with the Franks at Merwedeplein 37 and the van Pels family at Zuider Amstellaan 34. Hermann joined Otto Frank's company Pectacon in 1938 as a specialist in herbs and sausage production, and soon the families were socialising together.
Otto Frank and Hermann van Pels made plans to go into hiding as the anti-Jewish measures escalated in occupied Holland, and in July 1942 took their families to begin a two year confinement in the sealed-off upper rooms at the rear of Frank's business premises at Prinsengracht 263. They were concealed and aided by their colleagues Miep Gies, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl until an anonymous informant sent the Gestapo to the address in August 1944.
Those in hiding were arrested and in September 1944 deported to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, where Hermann van Pels was assigned hard labour. Following an injury to his hand, he was transferred to a group in another section of the camp which was subsequently selected for the gas chambers and exterminated in mid October.
Although the portrait of Van Pels in Anne Frank's posthumously-published diary is rarely flattering, which carried over into the subsequent media portrayals, he was remembered affectionately by those who helped hide them.
See also
Further reading
- The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank
- Anne Frank Remembered Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold
- The Hidden Life of Otto Frank Carol Ann Lee
- Roses from the Earth Carol Ann Lee