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Auguste van Pels (29 September 1900 - April 1945) was a German-Jew. She, her husband Hermann, and their son Peter fled 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 6 February 1945 to Raguhn (Buchenwald in Germany), then to the Czechoslovakian concentration camp Theresienstadt on 9 April 1945. This same card lists her as being alive on 11 April 1945. She died sometime in April or early May, before the camp was liberated. One witness said that she was killed by being pushed onto a train track.
She was called Petronella van Daan in the published edition of Anne Frank'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 the Frank family in hiding from 1942 for the duration of World War II, emerging from their hiding place, the Secret Annexe, only after the Netherlands were liberated in 1945. The eight people quickly dispersed.
In 2013, an elderly Anne Berkowitz (nee Frank), now living in Hebrew Home for the Aging in Palmdale, 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.
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