The Franks were soon joined by three family friends, as well as a German dentist. A week after the Franks entered the Secret Annex, the occupancy went from four to seven with the addition of Otto’s business partner, Hermann van Pels, his wife, Auguste, and 16-year-old son, Peter. The trio had planned to move in on July 14,1942, but as Nazis prepared to deport 4,000 Jews from Amsterdam, “they decided it would be safer to leave a day too early than a day too late,” Anne explained in her diary. And it was just in the nick of time: Over the course of July 15, 16 and 17, two trains, each carrying 700 Dutch Jews, left the Netherlands, bound for Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The van Pelses, who fled Germany for Amsterdam five years earlier, were close friends.
so Anne was looking forward to their company in the boring hiding place. From the very first day, all seven ate meals like “One big family.” But in the cramped 500-square-foot annex, it didn’t take long to grate on each other’s nerves. Unlike the mostly easygoing Franks, the van Pelses-know-it- all Hermann, moody Auguste and withdrawn Peter-were quite tense, not just with one another but also their unwilling roommates. Anne and the 44-year-old Hermann were “always at loggerheads,” as he picked on everything the teen said and did. Edith and Auguste, who cooked all the meals, battled over the shared makeshift kitchen (and exchanged words when Anne broke one of Mrs. van Pels’ soup bowls).
As for Peter, Anne complained, “He’s an obnoxious boy who lies around on his bed all day, only rousing himself to do a little carpentry work before returning to his nap. What a dope!” Four months later, the annex welcomed its eighth and final Jewish fugitive: Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist who escaped Nazi Germany not long after the Franks. Although 53 years old, he became Anne’s roommate (Margot bunked with their narents across the hall), with the teen sleeping on a makeshift bed made of a divan and chair. Again, Anne was initially excited by a new person in the hiding place, but within two weeks, she regretted it. “His Excellency,” as she called Pfeffer, “turned out to be an old-fashioned disciplinarian and preacher of unbearably long sermons on manners. As much as all four aggravated Anne, she tried to see the bigger picture of inviting them into the Secret Annex- and away from the clutches of the Nazis. “You have to make sacrifices for a good cause.” she acknowledaed. “and I’m glad I can make this small one.”
