"- Ai avut vreodată sentimentul că vrei să pleci și totuși să rămâi? "

"Nu uita, unde ai fost și ce ai văzut nu o să te facă prea plăcut în ochii oamenilor."

"- Am încercat să nu te trezesc.
- Nu tu m-ai trezit. Absența ta m-a trezit."

"prinzi mai multe muște cu miere decât cu oțet"

Lets imagine that Peter, the boy who shared Anne Frank's hideaway for 2 years, somehow survived the horrors of the concentration camps and was able to escape to the United States after the war. What sort of man would he have become, having lived through such trauma? This book fictionalises the life Peter didn't have. The essence of the book - how survivors carry the weight of their survival with them eternally - may relate to real Holocaust survivors. And in fact, don't we all carry our life baggage with us throughout life?

Al principio me ha parecido aburrido aunque enseguida me ha entretenido. Por lo que he entendido, la autora hace una crítica a todo lo publicado sobre Ana Frank Y a todo lo que se inventaron para que la obra de teatro y la película tuvieran éxito.

3.5/5 stars

There are very few women my age who have NOT read The Diary of Anne Frank. It is one of the few secular books that have had an impact on my life. The author, Ellen Feldman, draws from that harrowing true life story and offers us a glimpse of what may have happened if Peter - Anne's young love - would have survived the Nazi regime and continued to live his life, after immigrating to America.

The young Jewish boy, Peter van Pels (or van Daan as Anne renames him in her diary) was hidden in the "secret annex" along with the Frank family; he was never reported as dead or alive after the War. What IF Peter van Pels, the boy who loved Anne Frank, survived the Holocaust? Would he have remained trapped in a psychological annex for the rest of his life? That is the story Feldman weaves in this scenario of 'what ifs'. It is written from Peter's perspective as he struggles mentally with what he has been through, what he has survived, and things he will never be able to forget.

While it was not the narrative I was expecting (to be honest I thought it was book about Peter and Anne while they were living in the annex), it was an interesting read and one of those stories that make you think.

The book was the story of Peter van Pels, the boy who hid in the attic with the Franks. It's premise is that there was no actual record of his death and the author imagined what he may have done if he had lived. In the novel he immigrates to America and creates the American dream for himself in order to block out the past. However, when Anne's diary is published he finds he can no longer deny his experiences. I enjoyed the reading, the story is well told, but also a painful, as you empathize with Peter's desire to distance himself from his own experience and his inability to do so. Particularly, it dealt with the fact that Anne's perspective was simply her perspective of things and yet it has now become one of the most prominent lenses through which we view that history.

I hated this book, and then I grudgingly admired it. Then, I hated it some more, and then I got all the accompanying feelings that usually go with the Holocaust: compassion, pity, grief. A third of the way through, I wanted nothing more than to snap it closed with fervor and never look at it again. To imagine a life for Peter that he never had a chance to live seemed.....sanctimonious, perhaps even blasphemous.

I'm still conflicted about the concept of re-imagining a life for someone who is deceased - particularly someone who was murdered in such a horrific way. Also, the realism of what Peter may have gone through had he survived was, at times, nothing short of unsparingly uncomfortable. For some reason, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" didn't bother me nearly as much. Perhaps simply because the Lincoln novel was so over the top, it was clearly fiction; however, this novel was written with such gritty realism, that, like Peter, I often had a difficult time differentiating between my memory of what actually happened and what the make believe story was.

Overall, I give the author high marks for the ability to produce such strong feelings in a reader, but low marks for the subject. It was just too painful and too uncomfortable and too arrogant to assume that we know how Peter would have turned out. On the plus side, it did make me extremely curious to do some more reading about the lives of Otto Frank and Meyer Levin.

For me, this was not an easy book. Others may find it less disturbing. I would not hesitate to read other novels by Feldman. She has a gift.

What a great concept for a novel. From the authors perspective, The boy who loved Anne Frank narrates the life of Peter van Pels in America decades after the war. A great read for those who have read The Diary of Anne Frank at some point in their lives. One needs to remind themselves that this is fiction whilst reading it as you can easily lose yourself on how believable the story could be. Despite some dull moments for such a short story, I truly enjoyed reading it and my curiosity for Anne Frank grew more and I think I may read The Diary again, after all it's been 5 years since.

Sehr gutes Buch, natürlich, aber auch leider keine Biografie

This is another book I had hoped would be better than it was. The idea of Peter van Pels (who hid in the attic with Anne Frank) surviving and creating a new life for himself in the US, only to have his secret past reawakened when her diary was published, was very interesting to me. But I was disappointed that such a great idea was not executed well in the telling of this story.

Fiquei um bocadinho desapontada com este livro. Interessante o suficiente para manter a vontade de ler, mas não o que estava à espera.
A premissa é muito interessante. E se Peter Van Pels, amigo de Anne Frank, e habitante do Anexo Secreto, tivesse sobrevivido?
Nesta história de ficção especulativa, Peter, consegue sobreviver aos campos da morte e iniciar uma nova vida na América. Mas Peter é um jovem diferente do que Anne conhecia. Peter quer esquecer todo o seu passado e a sua identidade judia, mas o passado teima em bater-lhe à porta...

I've read books recently that explored what it might have been like if Anne Frank had survived, as well as one about if her sister Margo had survived. This book addresses the boy they both apparently loved, Peter van Pels.

Peter survives the camps and emigrates to America, where he is determined to reinvent himself as a Gentile rather than a Jew. He refuses to ever be a target again.

Of the three books I've read, I liked this one the most. It is the rawest and most honest. Peter is plagued by paranoia, inadequacy, a never-ending hunger, and the certain knowledge that he has betrayed his parents by refusing to acknowledge his own existence as a Jew. When THE BOOK comes out, followed by the play and then the movie, he almost becomes unhinged and loses the life he has made in America as well as his American family.

As he comes to terms with who he is and what happened to him, he encounters Holocaust-deniers and those who don't understand how bad it was and the depth of his rage. He wonders, “My God, have they no memory?”

Recommended.

This novel is based on the premise that since there was no record of what had happened to Peter van Daan, the boy whose family was in hiding with Anne Frank and her family, he might have survived. Peter van Pels (for that was his real name) is able to emigrate to America and build a life as a successful real estate developer. However, he is haunted by his past, his survival, and the confusion that he experiences by the publication of "The Diary of Anne Frank" and the subsequent stage play and movie. His survival -- and maybe the guilt he feels about it -- shapes everything about his life and leads to struggles to continue being a survivor. Interesting read.