AMONG THE THINGS I LEARNED IN THE PROCESS OF writing this book is what writers mean when they say, on pages such as this one, that there are people without whom their work would simply not have been possible. Below is a list (only partial, I fear) of those who made it a possibility—and a pleasure—for me to conceptualize and complete this book.
In Amsterdam, Annemarie Bekker, Mariela Chyrikins, Theresien Da Silva, and Norbert Hinterleitner gave generously of their time. Erika Prins not only guided me through the intricacies of the Anne Frank archive, but read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. Jan Erik Dubbelman and Dienke Honduis were unfailing sources of friendship, expertise, and encouragement when it was most needed. A historian and a fellow writer, Dienke gave my manuscript a meticulous reading and offered useful and indeed essential criticisms and edits that I incorporated in the final draft.
In Basel, Bernd Elias and Barbara Eldridge read the book with alacrity and responded with an enthuasism that meant a great deal to me. At the Anne Frank Center in New York, Maureen McNeil not only introduced me to the teachers and students at the Bell Academy, but provided invaluable introductions to her colleagues in Amsterdam.
I would like to thank Peter Carey and the Hertog Fellowship program of the MFA program at Hunter College, which provided research assistants who aided me at every stage: Ana Jomolca, Annie Levin, Tennessee Jones. Thanks also to Zachary Wolfe, Christina Bailly, and Alexandra Bowe for helping to ready the book for publication, and to Mark Schaevers for his humor, his friendship, and his assistance with research and translation.
My brilliant students at Bard College reacted to Anne Frank’s diary in ways that moved me so deeply that I decided to end the book with a chapter describing their responses. I would like to thank each and every one of them: Alex Carlin, Gabriel DeRita, Evelyn Fettes, Sam Freilich, Simon Glenn Gregg, Shay Howell, Samuel Israel, Sonya Landau, Sara Lynch-Thomason, James Molloy, Emily Moore, Evan Neuwirth, Angela Sakrison, Tegan Walsh, and Daniel Whitener. I would also like to thank Leon Botstein for bringing me to Bard, and Norman Manea for his friendship and his kindness in introducing me to this remarkable institution.
My editor, Terry Karten, was, as always, patient, inspiring, and more helpful (in more ways) than I can possibly say. Nor can I express how profoundly I depended on the resourcefulness, the thoughtfulness, and the unfailingly cheerful and positive energy of my agent, Denise Shannon. Though I used to joke that I could hear my friends picking up a magazine on the other end of the phone when I began to rant obsessively about the subject matter of this book, the truth is that I relied on them to listen and advise me. Thanks to my sons, Bruno and Leon Michels, and my daughter-in-law, Yesenia Ruiz. And finally, not one word of this book, or of anything I have written for more than thirty years, would have ever made it onto the page without the love and advice and support of my husband, Howie Michels.