Bas von Benda-Beckmann
Bas von Benda-Beckmann (b. 1976) currently works as a historian at the Anne Frank Foundation. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam, where he wrote his dissertation about the German historiography of the Allied bombings during the Second World War.
Previous books include The Velser Affair, which was shortlisted for the Libris History Prize, and The Oranjehotel, which garnered equally high praise. This latest work builds on previous historical research by Erika Prins, Esther Göbel, Gertjan Broek and Teresien da Silva.
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Bas von Benda-Beckmann
After The Annex
When Anne Frank’s father, Otto, returned to Amsterdam from Auschwitz, he sought to uncover what had happened to his wife and two daughters, the Van Pels family and dentist Fritz Pfeffer – the seven companions with whom he had spent two years in hiding before their arrest by the Gestapo. He awaited their return at the train station each day, photographs of them in hand. Tragically, after piecing together the stories of the few eyewitnesses he found, he would be forced to conclude that he alone had survived the Nazi death camps. Seventy-five years later, 'After the Annex' takes up Otto Frank’s project and carefully reconstructs each of their camp experiences in the final days of the Holocaust.
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Bas von Benda-Beckmann
A Tablecloth for Hitler
Growing up in a German-Dutch family, historian Bas von Benda-Beckmann developed a particular interest in the Second World War. His grandmother’s sister had been married to Hitler’s most trusted general Alfred Jodl, who was hanged for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. Another sister, meanwhile, had turned away from Nazism when she fell in love with a half-Jewish doctor, and personally knew those involved in Hitler’s failed assassination attempt in 1944.