Auguste van Pels

Auguste van Pels (1900-1945) was a German-Jew. She, her husband Hermann, and their son Peter van Pels feld Germany to the Netherlands in 1937. They joined Anne Frank's family in hiding from 1942 to 1944, when they were betrayed. Auguste and the Frank women were sent to Bergen-Belsen, but records show Auguste was transferred on February 6, 1945 to Raguhn (Buchenwald in Germany), then to the Czechoslovakia camp Theresienstadt on April 9, 1945. This same card lists her as being alive on April 11, 1945. The date and circumstances of her death are unrecorded, but had to have occured sometime between April 11 and early May 1945, when the camp was liberated.

She was called Petronella van Daan in the published edition of Anne Franks's diary.

Auguste van Pels in "The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging"
Auguste van Pels and her family joined young Anne Berkowitz's family in hiding from 1942 for the duration of World War II, emerging from their hiding place only after the Netherlands were liberated in 1945. The eight people quickly dispersed.

In 2013, an elderly Anne Berkowtiz, now living in a retirement home in California, shared some of her experiences with the eighth-grade history class from nearby Junipero Middle School. She described Auguste van Pels as an "airhead" and a "ditz", words that she did not have in her youth.