A touching and intimate autobiography, this account recalls the author’s remarkable childhood friendship with Anne Frank while attending a special school for Jewish children in Amsterdam during the late 1930s. With the story of her initial meeting and bonding with Anne Frank, Jacqueline van Maarsen’s memoir recollects her family’s near escape from the Netherlands only months after the Frank family went into hiding—or moved to Switzerland, as van Maarsen was lead to believe—and provides a revealing look into life under Nazi occupation. Written by a one-time friend who only discovered the truth about Anne’s fate after the war ended, this memoir is a moving, firsthand recollection of a youthful friendship in the foreboding days of World War II.