The gentiles who hid Anne Frank - remembered on the 90th anniversary of her birthday and diary publishing

Anne Frank with her father Otto Frank in movie poster

Of all the personalities associated with Anne Frank, the most important figure, without whom Anne Frank would never have been able to write her diary, is perhaps the least known.

He is Victor Kugler, the Mr. Kraler of her diary. As the principal business partner of Otto Frank, Victor Kugler assumed managerial control of the Franks’ Amsterdam spice-importing business when Nazi persecution forced the Frank family into hiding. It was Victor Kugler who kept the business going and obtained food rations under what was the harshest German wartime occupation in all of Western Europe. Without Victor Kugler, Anne Frank and her family would have starved to death a month after going into hiding.

Victor Kugler visits Anne Frank statue in
Utrecht, Netherlands, 1975 Fair use, Link

For this heroism, Victor Kugler himself was arrested and sent to a series of German labor camps in Holland where he survived by his wits and finally escaped a few weeks before the end of the war. 

Several years after the end of the war, when the Dutch spice business collapsed following the Indonesian revolution that nationalized Dutch holdings, Victor Kugler emigrated to Toronto, Canada. There, he led a quiet life where nobody knew who he was and what he had done during the war. Only twenty years later he began to reveal his story. 


The modern-day saga of this Righteous Gentile, who was honored as such at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, is told here in semi-documentary style, largely in his own words as told to Torontonian, Eda Shapiro, herself of Eastern European Jewish background; and by many others who knew him, as compiled by well-known Toronto writer-journalist Rick Kardonne.

Interview (video) with Rick Kardonne, November 2014 at L.A. Museum of Tolerance: 

Q: Why is Victor Kugler the missing link in the Anne Frank saga? 

Rick Kardonne, writer, "The Man Who Hid Anne Frank"

A: Because, as the business manager for Otto Frank when he and his family and two other Jewish associates had to go into hiding (under what was the harshest Nazi German rule in Western Europe) he did the business management, he got the food, and he provided and with all kinds of entertainment magazines. 

Without Victor Kugler, the Franks and everyone else would have starved for a month. 

Q:  After a month?

A:  After a month - for lack of food and lack of business.

Grandchild blesses grandparents names inscribed as "Righteous
Among the Nations" at Yad vaShem Museum in Israel

Q:  How long was he able to sustain them?

A:  From June 1942 to August '44.

Q:  How did you come across this story?

A:  I wrote for the Canadian and Jewish publications for over 15 or 20 years. And one of those who read me who who led the Likud organization in Toronto, met Irving Naftolin, who was a World War Two vet.  Irving Naftolin was married to the late Edith Shapiro (not my Edith) but late Edith Shapiro - who was a teacher and journalist. She had all of the memoirs of Victor Kugler - who had lived in Toronto since 1955. Edith Shapiro took them in and after she died he brought them to me because of my journalistic activities for the Jewish press in Toronto. 

And I got the memoirs in a brown paper bag. My job was to take all of these notes out of the brown paper bag and organize them into a book and this is the result.

Q:  Is the lesson of Anne Frank and the righteous Gentiles who stood up for their Jewish neighbors- getting lost, do you feel, in this generation?

A:  In some quarters, yes, but in others, no.  We have an excellent publication in Toronto called the National Post that constantly brings up the righteous Gentiles. So among some media outlets yes, but not all of them.

Q:  Looking back at at the Holocaust and and it's lesson for today - if - and and we see this in France - we see the the society turning against their Jewish community their Jewish citizens  and it's spreading throughout Europe . . .

A: Yes?

Q:  Are there Gentiles who will stand up again to protect the Jews, and in fact, even those who express support for Israel which is ...

A:  I think there are good people, righteous Gentiles in every country. I think so.  


Q:  What were the risks that Victor undertook?

A:  Being caught by the Gestapo.  Which he was eventually and he was sent to a slave labor camp because he wasn't Jewish.  But the Franks and the Van Pels's were Jewish so they were sent to Auschwitz. Only the Red Army liberated them - they were sent to Bergen-Belsen where they died of disease. 

That was  three weeks before the British invaded and liberated them.

Q: What was special about Victor?

A:  He was a religious Lutheran - and he had friends - and he said "I had to do this for my friends."  He had grown up you know in unfavorable social circumstances - nothing to be about being Jewish because he wasn't Jewish.  But this left an imprint on him which he did for the rest of his life.

Q:  Was he typical of the Dutch public's attitude towards their Jewish neighbors?

A:  First of all he was born in Austria.  So he could have been but the Dutch were not a hundred percent sympathetic to the Jews like the Danes were. 

Q: So the Austrians weren't, the Dutch weren't, and yet because of his friendship ...

A: Yeah, with Otto Frank.  And the Swedes did receive all of the Danish Jewish refugees and  they were in Sweden for the rest of the war.

Q:  Is protecting Jews now a matter of history or would you consider it a potential for the future?

A: Both, both.

Q: Do you see anti-semitism as a potential resurgence?

A:  I do but I think that a lot of these so-called liberal media types are more responsible.  Actually in Canada, the very conservatives, if anything, are friendlier to Jews now

Q: But the CBC - would you consider them liberal press?


A: Liberal press -  and not very . . . occasionally they run a good piece but . . . not reliable.

Rabbis Hier and Cooper: Anne Frank at 90 – Six points she might have added to her diary today: 

Rabbis Abe Cooper and Marvin Hier of Simon Wiesenthal
Center in L.A. and Jerusalem (photo:Phil McCarten /Reuters)

Wednesday, June 12 would have been Anne Frank’s 90th birthday. Through her iconic diary, she has become the global symbol of 1.5 million other virtually forgotten innocent Jewish children murdered by Nazi Germany and its willing European collaborators during the Holocaust.

So how would she have updated her diary today? Here are six possibilities, according to Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center: 

1. Joy at the miraculous rebirth and flourishing of her shattered people in a Jewish democratic state of Israel.
2. Anger that the hatred of Jews is surging in her native Europe and beyond and is being deployed by leading left-wing politicians in England and right-wing politicians in Poland.
3. Shock that Synagogues and Jewish schools must be protected by armed guards throughout the world. Despair that decades after she and her family were forced into hiding, so many Jews in the 21st Century have to hide their identities in public; not just anywhere but in the streets of European capitals including, Berlin, Paris, and yes, her hometown of Amsterdam. Can history be repeating itself?
4. Solidarity with Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize winner ever, who risked her life to give hope to young girls everywhere to have the right to an education and a future. Sadness that Malala has to live today in England because her life would be in danger again the moment she stepped on the soil of her native Pakistan.
5. Disgust that the world, led by the United Nations does so little to protect children from being brainwashed to hate and become martyrs for religious fanatics, from becoming tools for tyrants and human shields for terrorists.
6. Cautious optimism and lurking pessimism about the power of the written and spoken word to bring about change through the amazing tool of social media. Anne wrote her original diary in the Secret Annex, having no idea if anyone else would ever read of her innermost thoughts, fears and hopes. Today, social media virally transmits all the good, bad, and ugly, that the human imagination can produce.

Read more:

NYC & West Coast 9/11 firefighters unite at tribute documentary; How have they (and we) evolved to protect us since 2001?

World Trade Center Twin Towers

WTC Etching at NYFD W. 48th St Firefighter Memorial Park 

In 1994, November Productions' filmmaker Kevin Dornan created a multimedia tribute to firefighters from various parts of the United States. New York was the first location for the filming, and Dornan met with firefighters from across the city before choosing Mike Weinberg. Over the course of several days, Dornan recorded, both on film and in still photography, the life of a firefighter. 

The project was discontinued after Dornan finished shooting New York. 

Dornan only learned that Mike was killed at the 9/11/01 World Trade Center attack six months later. Dornan completed "Liberty, Courage, and Hope: The Portrait of an American Hero" as a tribute to all the first-responders whose lives were taken in rescuing victims of al-Qaeda's attacks. 

What had originally been intended as a celebratory documentary of living American firefighters-is now a bittersweet remembrance of a brave soldier. 

The movie trailer was not available at press time, but here is a memorial montage to Mike Weinstein. 

From the varied depictions of the everyday life of a firefighter to the now-fateful final dialogue, this film, now narrated by Alec Baldwin,  is one to be viewed as its own inspirational portrait.

"We as a nation need to heal, and by having even one story of hope and bravery can keep the memory our heroes with us forever," writes Mr. Dornan.

The Museum of Tolerance held the West Coast premiere of "Liberty, Courage and Hope: The Portrait of an American Hero," followed by a question-and-answer session with director Kevin Dornan on September 11th, 2014. 

NYC Fireman Michael Lynch, a colleague of Weinstein flew to L.A. (in his first 9/11 since 2001 outside NYC) to participate in the event. Joining them was Lynch's colleague from Los Angeles, L.A. County Fire Chief Craig Fleetwood.

Firefighters and rescuers from Los Angeles flew on the first flight permitted during the 9/11/01 FAA ban on airplanes. Here they talk about their involvement in and reactions to the film.

In DemoCast's video interviews from the event filmmaker, Dornan, discusses his attitudes about the project and its meanings.  FF Lynch relates how 9/11 is commemorated differently for firefighters and their constituents in New York over time.  Chief Fleetwood Lynch explains how firefighter first responders participate in pre-positioning and allocating emergency equipment- in coordination with federal and local counter-terror intelligence- to make resources available where they might be needed, such as conspicuous public terror-target events. 


(Menu controls on upper left). 

In-depth interviews at the West Coast premiere screening of "Liberty Courage and Hope" a film about the lives of firemen, and the death of Michael Weinstein, found dead beneath a fire truck at World Trade Center in 2001. Kevin Dornan is still completing national distribution arrangements for the documentary. Details can be found on www.LibertyCourageAndHope.com/."

Oscar-nominated picture extends Holocaust interest past Remembrance Day- but will it end Oscar night?

Producer Adam Benzine discusses "Spectres of the Shoah" with Exec Dir. Liebe Geft at at Museum of Tolerance screening 

Oscar-nominated (documentary: short-subject) filmmaker, Adam Benzine
Adam Benzine takes JooTube inside his producing of "Claude Lansmann: Spectres of The Shoah." The film is nominated for an Academy Award (Category: documentary (short-subject) and in addition to cinema, it has been broadcast by BBC and will be shown in the US on HBO.



French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann reflects on the difficulty of editing and structuring his behemoth Holocaust film SHOAH, in this second clip from Adam Benzine's Oscar®-nominated short subject documentary CLAUDE LANZMANN: SPECTRES OF THE SHOAH.




Oscar-docupix, "Specters of the Shoah" director Adam Benzine at Wiesenthal

http://JooTube.TV Before an audience on Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day 2016, documentarian, Adam Benzine, in conversation with Liebe Geft (director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles) on the making of "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah."



FILM and GUEST BIO:

In 1973, French journalist Claude Lanzmann began work on "SHOAH," a film that would forever change his life. Twelve years later, having tracked down former SS officers, dozens of death camp survivors, and having shot more than 200 hours of footage, he finally completed his nearly 10-hour-long documentary masterpiece. In CLAUDE LANZMANN: SPECTRES OF THE SHOAH, the maverick filmmaker recounts the trials and tribulations he faced while creating his Holocaust magnum opus, as well as the weight it left him carrying.

Adam Benzine is an English writer, director and journalist based in Toronto. Currently serving as the Canadian Bureau Chief for Uk-based entertainment trade publisher C21 Media, he is the former Associate Editor and Online Editor for Realscreen, the international publisher of non-fiction film and television industry news and content. He has written for a range of publications including The Globe and Mail, The Independent, Indiewire and Little White Lies.

"Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah," is his directorial debut.

Why Mr. Denis Bieber is upset that the Jewish establishment is weak its responsibility to educating society about the past and potential future Holocaust. At the Holocaust Remembrance Day screening of "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah" at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.



Exploring the roots and joint ideologies of the Nazis and early Arab-Palestinian "National" Movement headed by Jerusalem's religious leader Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini

Confronting anti-Semitism and the Jihadists (courtesy Actual News)

Prime Minister John Howard (Australia) visits results of nations' failure to thwart anti-Semitism - at Museum of Tolerance in US

Australia's former PM John Howard (with wife, Janette) recognized the consequences of appeasing tyrants as they tour the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance with Rabbi Abe Cooper & its director, Liebe Geft.



Prime Minister Howard writes of his experience from the Museum in its guestbook, "A moving and evocative museum. The lessons of Munich should never be forgotten. The right choices for nations are often hard and unpopular." John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007

'A tolerant West should assume a zero- tolerance policy against Islamic supremacism,' Aussie PM John Howard visiting U.S. Museum of Tolerance

Lessons-learned: Liberal Europe's trusting that appeasing Nazi Germany by ceding the Sudentenland would keep them safe from Nazi imperialism - ought to be applied today in strategies towards Islamism,' advises Aussie former-Prime Minister John Howard, who spoke 26 September at L.A.'s Museum of Tolerance.

"They have infinite patience, as well as infinite hostility," he said. "Never surrender when you're confronted with evil. We have to maintain a vigilance, we have to persevere."



The folly of Western liberalism to hope appeasing aggressors to avoid war (gleaned from Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement to concede Czechoslovakia's Sudentenland to Herr Hitler) actually results in more painful, costly war later. This should guide Western policies toward modern Islamism, Mr. Howard believes.

Mr. Howard claims that the West shouldn't appease, but adopt and maintain a vigilant, cultural and military resistance against tyrannical and imperialist Islamism. He is introduced by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean at Simon Wiesenthal Center). Museum of Tolerance's Director, Liebe Geft, toured PM Howard around the Museum, a testament that Western Europe's naive tolerance of supremacist Nazism cost Europe the world's largest loss of life in human history, World War II and the Holocaust.