A Human Face

by Danny Fisher


From Reuters:

    A photograph of the boy with the “beautiful brown eyes” who Anne Frank recalled as her “one true love” in the diary she wrote whilst in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands is to go on display in Amsterdam.

    The photo of Peter Schiff was donated to the Anne Frank museum by his former childhood friend Ernst Michaelis who realized after rereading Anne’s diary recently there were no known pictures of Schiff, a museum spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

    [...]

    They would collect each other from school and walk hand in hand through their local neighborhood.

    “He had dark hair, beautiful brown eyes, ruddy cheeks and a nicely pointed nose. I was crazy about his smile, which made him look so boyish and mischievous.”

    Peter later died in Auschwitz, while Anne died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

    [...]

    Anne last saw Peter a few days before she moved into the annexe, but wrote of him in her diary more than 1-1/2 years later after dreaming of him.

    “I’ve never had such a clear mental image of him. I don’t need a photograph, I can see him oh so well,” she said.