Remembering Buddy Elias: Guardian of Anne Frank's Legacy

Published nearly 80 years ago, Anne Frank's diary continues to inspire. This article looks back on Buddy Elias, who was Anne's first cousin, and head of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, Switzerland until he died in 2015. Buddy sought to keep Anne's legacy alive, but what would both think today of Israel's brutal repression of Palestine, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank?

Anne Frank’s diary, first brought out on 25 June, 1947, ranks as one of the world’s most read books. In this article first published in 2019, we are highlighting how the young German-Jewish teenager whose clandestine wartime diary in the Netherlands has touched the hearts of hundreds of millions and what it means today in the current climate of genocide and repression both in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Global Geneva Editor Edward Girardet remembers Buddy Elias, a close family friend, who died on 16 March, 2015. Until his death, Elias served as President of the Anne Frank Fonds, a Swiss foundation, fighting for nearly 40 years to ensure that his cousin’s legacy of peace and tolerance not be forgotten.

Born on 12 June, 1929, in Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, Anne lived most of her short life in Amsterdam, where her family had fled the Nazis when she was four-and-a-half years old. Her book, Diary of a Young Girl, originally ‘Het Achterhuis’ in Dutch (The Secret Annex), was based on her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944 when the Netherlands were occupied by the Nazis. Following the family’s arrest by the Gestapo in August, 1944, they were all transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Anne and her sister Margot were eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen in Germany, where they died, probably of typhus, in November, 1944. Only Otto, the father, survived.

As with so many young people, I had read Anne Frank’s diary while in junior high school at the Schiller Gymnasium in Cologne, Germany, where my family had lived for two years during the mid-1960s. Anne was somewhat of an imaginary friend, someone I felt I knew, because her writing was so matter-of-fact and intimate.

I felt that I was with her during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, except that I had the advantage of living more than two decades later. I also benefited from hindsight. I knew what was going to happen, notably that she would be arrested and deported to the death camps, but that, in the end, the Germans would be defeated.

Buddy Elisa, shortly before his death in 2015.

This is what Buddy Elias, Anne Frank’s cousin and a close friend of my mother’s since growing up in Switzerland before World War II, reminded me whenever he came to visit. Until the war broke out, both my mother, a Swiss figure skating champion, and Buddy had been skating partners as part of ice shows in Alpine resorts such as Davos and Wengen.

Anne: Always Goofing Around

When Buddy came to stay with us in Cologne, he was a well-known actor on the Swiss and German theatre stages, as well in film and television. “You would have found Anne a lot of fun,” he once told my brother and me. “She was always goofing around, playing tricks on everyone.”

The Nazi period was often a discussion at school

I also felt that as a post-war teenager, I could empathize with Anne. World War II was still very close. It fascinated me and I had read a lot of books. While in Cologne, barely 20 years after the Nazi surrender, the vestiges of conflict remained wherever you looked. There were the empty lots and shrapnel-marked buildings in downtown Cologne where rubble from the Allied bombing still lay. Or the rusting Allied and German military vehicles that one could still find in the surrounding forests.

Plus it was a subject that my teachers often discussed, sometimes out of civic duty, sometimes out of bitterness, such as my Latin master, Herr Kitschen, who, as a young boy, had had his stamp collection stolen by two American GI’s when they entered the city. But unlike France today, where open discussion about war-time collaboration often remains a largely taboo subject, World War II was very much part of the school curriculum, warts and all.

Anne Frank's Diary

So, Anne Frank’s diary helped put a lot of this into perspective. From a young person’s point of view. This is important, particularly for the new generations of today who are now contending with a whole slew of conflicts from Ukraine, Iran, Sudan and the Middle East, particularly Israel's ruthless assaults against Palestine, Lebanon and other neighbours.

Whether American, European, Arab, Israeli or from anywhere else in the world for that matter, Anne Frank's point is that none of us are any different. Even with the nightmare of totalitarianism, Anne still struggled with the day-to-day life of an ordinary teenager.

Buddy Elias: helping young people understand the importance of peace

So in January, 2015, my own teenage son Alexander and I arranged with Buddy, then living in Basel at the age of 89, to come and speak to a group of international schools in Geneva. I had often told our kids about Buddy, whom I had known since childhood. He was a comedian and could never stop telling jokes.

My brother and I often demanded that he recount ones that he had to tell us again and again over the years. But Buddy also sometimes sat down and somberly explained what had happened to his relatives, the Otto Frank family, under the Nazis. All this left a lasting impression.

This is what I wanted my son to hear. I considered it important that he and his fellow high school students listen to Buddy’s – and Anne’s – message first-hand.

For Buddy, this was particularly crucial amid so many ongoing conflicts, whether in Syria, Palestine, Libya, Sudan or Afghanistan, with the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including children by various powers that be. And it bore deep resonance with regard to anti-semitism against both Jews and Palestinians. At one point, he said, “this is what Israelis have to remember. No one is different.”

Gerti and Buddy in Basel

Several months earlier, my family and I had driven up to Basel, a two-and-half hour car drive from Geneva, to see Buddy and his wife, Gerti, a tall and striking actress, a former Jewish refugee from Austria, for lunch at their home. Both still kept a hectic schedule travelling the world for the Anne Frank Fonds in support of youth and social change projects funded by the foundation.

Buddy talked non-stop about their work and the importance of involving young people. For him, the whole point of the Anne Frank legacy was to contribute toward a better understanding among religions, and to serve the cause of peace.

Combatting Racism and Intolerance

“It is up to young people to help bring about this change,” Buddy said. “Anne Frank has become a world symbol for combatting all forms of racism and intolerance. That is what Anne wrote in her diary.” In many ways, he continued, Anne Frank belongs to no one – neither the Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus…Nor the Swiss, Israelis, Dutch or anyone else.

“The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews,” he said, citing his favourite line from Anne's diary.

Seeing both Buddy and Gerti in Basel was particularly gratifying for me. The last time I had met them was in West Berlin, well before the 1989 fall of the Wall, where Buddy was working on a TV series as well as on stage. At the time, West Berlin still only had a relatively small, but steadily expanding Jewish population of 5,000-6,000 souls, a fraction of the 160,000 Jews who had lived there before the Nazis.

I had come to do a PBS documentary about the divided city. But I wanted to do something different. Not the usual Wall story but something which explained why Berlin is such an exceptional place. I asked him why he, a Jew, had decided to return to Germany. So many German Jews who had survived the war, such as former refugees now living in the United States or Canada, absolutely refused to step foot on German soil. Those who wished to speak German would go to Switzerland for their holidays.

Buddy smiled. “Because whether I like it or not, my culture is German. Obviously, we never want the same things to happen again. Ever. But there is a new generation of young people in Germany, and they are not to blame for the Nazis. They are the future.”

Today, more than 35,000 Jews, primarily from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, live in Berlin, according to German government figures. Many, too, it appears, are reluctant to continue onto Israel, primarily because of jobs but also, for young people, to avoid military service.

Very few Jews of German origin, however, have ‘come back’. More recently, there has been an influx of Jews from Israel, where many are deeply upset by what is happening under Netanyahu. Increasingly, too, American Jews who have received German passports because of the origins of their grandparents and great grandparents, feel uncomfortable living in the United States under Trump. (See Global Geneva article The Yanks Are Back in Europe)

Despite Buddy’s renown as a German actor, he was better known worldwide for his association with Anne Frank and the Fonds. He was often on the BBC talking about Anne Frank whenever there was an anniversary or an issue that related to her life.

Born in 1925, Buddy and the Elias family moved in 1931 to Switzerland from Frankfurt, where the Otto Frank family also lived. The Franks fled to Amsterdam in 1933, having decided at the time that the Netherlands was a safe option. Until the German invasion, Buddy recounted, the Franks had regularly visited the Elias’s over the summer and winter holidays, staying at the family house in Basel.

Buddy remembers spending much of his time growing up with Anne and her older sister Margot, often writing and then performing Punch and Judy shows for the families. “Anne and I were very fond of each other and talked a lot,” Buddy recalled.

Am Anne Frank letter

Too Dangerous for Jews to Travel in 1939

Buddy saw the Franks for the last time in 1938. They were supposed to come again in 1939, but with growing anti-semitic aggression in Germany following Kristallnacht, the November, 1938 pogrom by SA forces and Nazi gangs, the Franks decided that it was too risky to travel, even through Belgium and France.

Then, on 10 May, 1940, the Germans attacked the Netherlands, putting an end to all hope of them ever making it back to Switzerland. Nevertheless, Buddy continued to correspond with Anne until it became impossible to send letters.

After the war, Otto Frank, sole survivor of the Frank family, came to Switzerland, eventually establishing the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel in 1963. On Otto’s death in 1980, Buddy took over as president.

“How wonderful nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” (Anne Frank’s diary)

Anne's diary

Anne’s diary, which has been translated into over 70 languages with over 35 million copies sold, is considered to be one the world’s great bestsellers. Royalties and other revenue related to the sales are directed to the Fonds, which does not accept funding from other sources. According to Buddy, Anne’s diary has been narrated in countless different forms, even by those who have never heard of her.

“Everyone has something to say or contribute that can help make a positive difference in the world,” Buddy told my son.

So when Alexander and I began preparing for Buddy’s visit to Geneva to speak to an assembly of students from the International School of Geneva in mid-February, 2015, we were more than excited. Buddy, too, was eager to come with Gerti. Shortly before the event, however, Gerti rang to say that they would have to postpone for a few weeks as Buddy's doctor had ordered him to slow down for health reasons.

On 17 March, Gerti telephoned again. Buddy, she told me softly, had died the day before. She had wanted to ring personally to let us know as his planned visit had been so important to him. He had not wanted to let us down.

But Buddy didn’t. Alexander and I both remembered another favourite line of Buddy’s from her diary that should rank in the mind of every young person concerned about the future: “How wonderful (if) nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is a foreign correspondent and author. He has reported conflicts and humanitarian crises for more than four decades.