Rider signs first memoir from Anne Frank's childhood friend Pick-Goslar

Rider has landed My Friend, Anne Frank, the “profound and moving” first memoir from Holocaust survivor Hannah Pick-Goslar.

Ebury publisher Andrew Goodfellow acquired world rights directly from the author. Ghostwritten by journalist Dina Kraft, it will be published in hardback and e-book on 16th May 2023.

Pick-Goslar will share the final untold portrait of her childhood friend Anne Frank as they navigated coming-of-age in Amsterdam. The book tells of the author’s “unwavering grit and resilience” during the Nazi occupation of Europe, the Frank family’s disappearance and her eventual deportation to Bergen Belsen. She also recounts her reunion with Anne Frank at the concentration camp, describing how she risked everything to toss packages filled with food and clothes over a barbed-wire fence to her friend.

Pick-Goslar said: “At a time when the world is taking a dark turn and we see millions of innocent people on the move and under attack, alongside a rise of antisemitic hate crimes and Holocaust denial, I feel my personal story takes on new urgency.

“As a girl I witnessed the world I loved crumble and vanish, destroyed by senseless hatred, and with it, my best friend Anne Frank.

“Anne was able to tell part of her story. I hope my memoir will help illuminate what she, and so many other children like us, endured at the hands of the Nazis, only because we were Jewish. And for those of us who were lucky enough to have survived, I hope my story will shed light on how we rebuilt our lives.”

Goodfellow commented: “From Viktor Frankl to Edith Eger, Rider has a proud history of publishing books that keep alive the memory and truth of the Holocaust. It is just incredible that Hannah’s own history and the light it sheds on Anne Frank’s story has never been fully shared before. It’s an inspiring story we felt the world needed to hear and so we reached out to Hannah. We feel privileged that Hannah and her family have entrusted us with that role.”

Kraft added: “I vividly remember feeling bereft after finishing reading Anne Frank’s diary when I was a girl. The loss felt real, as if I had lost a friend. And now I have the privilege of helping tell the story of Hannah, one of Anne’s closest friends, which is, in part, the story Anne did not survive to tell. This book will tell of the dehumanisation and terror of life in a concentration camp and where Hannah, her parents now dead, found the strength to keep herself and her little sister alive and then, at 15 years old, after bearing witness to the unimaginable, to forge an entirely new life.”