The boy who loved Anne Frank By Hellena Feldman

Nearly everyone recognizes the name Anne Frank; it is synonymous with wit, honesty and bravery. Her diary has touched millions. I can't imagine anyone not being inspired by her story. Ellen Feldman, however, can. In her novel, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank , she imagines a man who suffers a mental break at the mere sight of Anne's published diary. Why would the writings of a young girl cause a man's psyche to disintegrate. Because he is Peter van Pels, the boy who hid in the Annex with Anne and her family. He is Peter van Pels, the man who has tried desperately to forget his past.

In the book's "Acknowledgments" section, Feldman, a New York author, describes her experience visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 1994. Her tour guide stated that the fates of all the occupants of the Annex were known, they were arrested on 04.August 1944, except for that of Peter.Ellen Feldman was fascinated by the idea that Peter might have survived the Holocaust and decided to write a book about how his life might have turned out.. By the time she discovered her guide had been misinformed (according to a Dutch Red Cross dossier, Peter died in Mauthausen concentration camp on the 5th of may 1945, just 3 days before its liberation), the character had already formed in her head.Peter van Pels, whose family name was listed as van Daan in THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, allegedly stated to Anne while they were hiding in their Amsterdam attic annex during the height of WWII that if he got out alive he would reinvent himself entirely. There is no direct evidence that Peter perished in the Nazi death camps --- although this has been assumed by all who knew him, including Otto Frank --- so Feldman has taken this supposition and built a fictional life around it. Thus, it is Feldman's creation we meet in her book.

When The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank opens, it is 1952 and an adult Peter is sitting in a psychiatrist's office. The doctor has been consulted to treat the sudden, inexplicable bout of laryngitis which has seized Peter's body. Much to his dismay, the psychiatrist insists on peppering him with ridiculous questions, even inquiring as to his wife's reading material. Surprisingly, it's the answer to this last inquiry that gives him his answer: Madeleine (his wife) had been reading the newly-published The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank.It turns out that Peter is experiencing what some professionals call a conversion disorder, channeling his shock at the sight of Anne's published diary into a hysterical reenactment of his years spent whispering in the Secret Annex.

The publication of the book causes not only laryngitis, but a psychotic break that has Peter grappling with a past he's worked desperately to bury. Unknown to the Red Cross, he’s escaped the prison camps and starts in 1946 when he arrives in New York. After an encounter with an Immigration-officer who mistakes him for a gentile he realizes how easy it would be to change his whole personality, he wouldn't even have to lie, all he had had to do was keep quiet. When he steps off the boat in New York, Peter covers the tattooed number on his arm, hides his Jewish ancestry, and sets out in pursuit of the American dream. He begins his new life in total denial of his old one, deletes every memory of it and that with such sufficiency that he finally is not able to remember any more. He never answers any questions about it and starts to live a lie.

Peter van Daan is now living in America as Peter van Pels and passing himself off as Christian. Ironically, the first girl Susannah he falls in love with ultimately rejects him because she is Jewish and her family would not be pleased if she married outside of her faith. Funny enough, he begins dating her sister , Madeline, and she does not have an issue with his faith as their courtship eventually leads to marriage and a family. His greatest fear is that anyone could find out that he is Jewish but still he seems to be drawn to the Jewish community. His best friend and later business-partner Harry is Jewish. Peter finds employment in the growing field of Real Estate/Property Management and settles down to a nice suburban life in New Jersey. So not even a decade later, he has a successful career, a nice home and an unsuspecting Jewish wife. His business is going extremely well, the couple have two lovely little girls, a third baby is on the way (it will be a boy) and the future looks bright for Peter van Pels. He has hidden his past so successfully that no one - not even Madeleine - suspects the pains he endured during the war.However, Peter is continually haunted in his dreams by his secret and realizes the truth in the affirmation that you cannot run away from your past! In 1947, Peter’s worst fears are realized as a novel is released worldwide titled ANNE FRANK: THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL (later re-titled to match the play/film, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK). Not only is Peter horrified that he will be exposed but his own wife and daughters become fans of the novel. Peter at one point steals the novel and travels a great distance to dispose of it --- only to sneak back out into the night to reclaim for himself. Everywhere he goes, people talk about his past -- and there's nothing he can do about it, because although the teenage girl who wrote the book is dead, she's a mega-star of international proportions. He feels as a gawky teenager who spent more than two