And her talent as an artist is mentioned briefly by Anne in a diary entry from 1944, the one where she records a dream about Peter Schiff -- he and Anne are "looking at a book of drawings by Mary Bos. The dream was so vivid I can even remember some of the drawings..."
While it's clear that she did survive the war, not much else has been known about her or about the circumstances of her survival. But a recent profile piece on Bos done by a newspaper in North Carolina (where Bos now lives) yields quite a bit of new information about this one-time friend of Anne Frank.
From the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News :
With nimble fingers, Mary Bos Schneider, 81, flipped through the photocopied pages of her school annual. She was looking for a specific page, and when she finally found it, she concentrated hard.
"Think of your school girlfriends in the past," Schneider read. "When you think of that, and these last years, think then Mary also of me."
And it's signed, "with love" by Anne Frank.
Schneider, who was known to Anne Frank as Mary Bos, was born in Amsterdam. Her mother and brother were both born in Philadelphia, but her father was a billiards champion from Holland.
From the third to the fifth grade, Schneider attended the Montessori School.
She remembered Anne as "a live wire." "Whenever she wanted to be in a group, she was in it," Schneider said. "She was almost overly active."
Schneider was in the fifth grade before she left Holland in 1940. It was years later when she came across the book The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. The book was published in the United States.
n the middle of the night in 1939, Schneider's mother received a letter from the American Consulate telling her to leave the country. It took the family a few months to secure visas to leave because both Schneider and her father were citizens of Holland.
"I remember looking out -- my brother and I heard all this commotion out on the street," Schneider said.
We looked outside and there were soldiers, so to speak, marching on our streets, with shovels over their shoulders or rakes, not dressed and just waving at everybody. They had been mobilized. We could see them in the field learning how to be a soldier."
They had no guns or uniforms, she added.
The family finally left the country in February 1940. Schneider was 11.
"Holland was occupied four days later," Schneider said.
Schneider did not find out Anne died in the Holocaust until her diary was published. She held up the photograph of the girls at the party and pointed to a few faces.
A handful of them were Jewish and out of those, some also died in the concentration camp.
She named others who, being Christians, were able to weather the occupation of Holland. Schneider shook her head, calling the Holocaust atrocities "horrible."
On Monday, Schneider and her husband, Bob, are flying to Amsterdam to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Anne Frank House, which opened on May 3, 1960.
About two years ago, two women who work with the Anne Frank House came to Hendersonville to interview Mary about her memories of Anne Frank and her apartment.
"I remember they had very dark furniture," Schneider said. "They're trying to have the apartment look exactly the way it used to."
On Wednesday, the Anne Frank House will have an official reception to celebrate it's anniversary, and Mary Schneider and her husband will be in attendance.
No comments:
Post a Comment