Nanette Konig-Blitz (born 6 April 1929) is a

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

survivor and former classmate of

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

. She has lived in São Paulo, Brazil since 1953. In 2015, she published a book about being a Belsen survivor called ''Eu Sobrevivi ao Holocausto''. On Holocaust Memorial Day 26 January 2018, Nanette's book was published in English with the title ''Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor & Classmate of

''.

Biography

Nanette was born on 6 April 1929 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, to Martijn Willem Blitz, a worker at the Amsterdam Bank, and Helene Victoria Davids, who were of Jewish origin. She had an older brother, Bernard Martijn, born in 1927, and a younger brother, Willem, who was born in 1932 with a " blue baby" heart defect and died in 1936. The Nazis occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, and at the beginning of 1941, Jewish students were assigned to Jewish-designated schools; it was then that Nanette became a classmate of Anne Frank. The Blitz family was arrested and taken to the

Westerbork transit camp Camp Westerbork ( nl, Kamp Westerbork, german: Durchgangslager Westerbork, Drents: ''Börker Kamp; Kamp Westerbörk'' ), also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, d ...

in September 1943. On 15 February 1944, they were deported to the

. Martijn died in late November of 1944. At the beginning of December 1944, Bernard and Helene were deported from Bergen-Belsen and Nanette remained alone. Bernard died in the

Oranienburg concentration camp Oranienburg was an early Nazi concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis in the state of Prussia when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of Nazi Party from the Berlin region, mos ...

, while Helene was deported to the

Beendorf Beendorf is a municipality in the Börde district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. History During World War II a concentration camp was established in Beendorf. It was a subcamp to the Neuengamme concentration camp. From February 1944 until April 194 ...

salt mines as a slave labourer; she died in April 1945 on a train en route to Sweden. In January 1945, Nanette was transferred to a part of Bergen-Belsen known as the "small women’s camp". From there, she saw Anne Frank in a "large field of women" through the barbed wired fence. These two camps become one section and it was then that Nanette was reunited with Anne and her sister Margot. : Nanette survived Bergen-Belsen and was rescued by the British Major Leonard Berney. After the war, she spent three years in hospital due to

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

, the disease which killed Margot and Anne Frank. During this period, Anne's father visited her to ask about his daughters. Later,

Otto Frank Otto Heinrich Frank (12 May 1889 – 19 August 1980) was a German businessman who later became a resident of the Netherlands and Switzerland. He was the father of Anne and Margot Frank and husband of Edith Frank, and was the sole member o ...

gave Nanette the diary written by his daughter Anne, '' Het Achterhuis'' (''The Secret Annex''). After Nanette had recovered, she went to live in England where she met her future husband, John Konig, who was of Hungarian origin. In 1953, they married and moved to Brazil. Nanette gave lectures about the Holocaust and her life. In 2018, her memoir ''Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor - Classmate of Anne Frank'', a detailed account of her experiences during World War II, was published by

Amsterdam Publishers Amsterdam Publishers is the largest publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe. It was founded in 2012 by Dutch art historian Liesbeth Heenk. Since 2019 it focuses on Holocaust-related literature. History Amsterdam Publishers started publishing ...

. The book won the Readers' Favorite Gold Medal Award in 2019.

Bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Konig, Nanette Blitz 1929 births Living people Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Jewish concentration camp survivors Women in World War II Dutch emigrants to Brazil People from Amsterdam Anne Frank Dutch Jews Brazilian Jews 21st-century Dutch women writers