Hanny Michaelis
Hanny Michaelis (1922–2007) was born in Amsterdam. In 1941 she took her school leaving exams and shortly afterwards she and her parents went, separately, into hiding. They never saw each other again.
Hanny’s parents were arrested in 1943 and were taken first to the camp at Westerbork and then to Sobibor, where they were murdered. Shortly after the liberation of the Netherlands, Michaelis returned to Amsterdam, where she stayed for the rest of her life. For years she worked in the Amsterdam city council’s department of artistic affairs. She also published six collections of poetry. Her wartime diaries recently appeared in two volumes, both of which were enthusiastically received.
More Hanny Michaelis
Wartime Diaries, 1940-1945
When the poet Hanny Michaelis’s diaries from the German occupation of the Netherlands were discovered after her death, they caused a literary sensation. The inevitable comparisons to Anne Frank soon gave way to a fuller appreciation of Michaelis’s more mature and knowledgeable voice. Now, for the first time, the most provocative, moving and relevant passages from her diaries have been brought together in a single volume.
The poetry of Hanny Michaelis
Hanny Michaelis established a reputation as a poet of contained lyricism and epigrammatic conciseness. Her work is tempered by an almost wry awareness of limitation.