Annexed
Amsterdam is under Nazi occupation. For most teenagers, the idea of being stuck in a few small rooms with your family for months on end is unbearable. Add another family with a teenage son, a middle-aged man, and the possibility of discovery by the Nazis at any moment and you have a story. A story that was tragically true for Anne Frank and many other Jews like her living under Nazi rule. In Annexed, Dogar offers a different insight into the Anne Frank story.
Written as a series of diary entries from the teenage Peter Van Pels’ perspective, Annexed looks at the possible emotions that may have plagued a teenage boy first in hiding and then faced with life and death in the concentration camps. Those who have read Anne Frank’s diary may feel that they already know Peter, one of Anne’s fellow prisoners, but what was he actually thinking? Annexed offers a possible answer.
Dogar has tried to get across the emotions of an ordinary boy coming of age in extraordinary circumstances. She has researched Peter Van Pels and his fellow captors’ backgrounds and stories extensively, using memoirs and interviews with survivors to add dimension and colour to the narrative.
Where Anne Frank’s diaries end, Annexed carries on. Here the book is in its element, culminating, as it does, in an emotionally moving end. Significantly, the author also refers to the Anne Frank House and Foundation, which researches into modern genocide, thus making the story’s impact even more relevant today. Dogar wants the new generation of readers to take on the responsibility of preventing these horrors from ever recurring. It is clear that Dogar has written this book ‘lest we forget’ and it is books like Annexed that are crucial in ensuring that we never will.
