In the summer of 1940, when Anne was eleven years old, she fell in love
with a boy named Peter Schiff who had recently moved to Amsterdam from
Germany. He was three years older than her and they ran around the
neighborhood holding hands that summer. A few years later, while in hiding,
Anne often thought of him and wrote about him. Later, she died in
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and he died
in Auschwitz concentration camp.
Until Sunday, the public had seen no photo of Peter, but a man in Britain
realized that his good friend, when he was a boy in Germany, was Anne's lost
love. The man, Ernst Michaelis, donated a nice photo he had of Peter (shown
above) to the
Anne Frank House. In 1939, Ernst was about to be sent to England for safety by
his parents (via the Kindertransport program) while Peter left Berlin for
Amsterdam with his parents. As the two friends parted,
Peter gave Ernst the photo. The inscription says:
"In friendly remembrance of your friend Lutz Peter Schiff." Above, I also
put a photo of Anne (from the summer of 1940).