Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Film Tells a Friend’s Story of Anne Frank

‘My Name Is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank,” a best-selling memoir written by Anne Frank’s childhood friend, is now being adapted into a feature film.

MEMORY: A movie recalls the friendship between Anne Frank (above) and Jacqueline van Maarsen.

Jacqueline van Maarsen, who was referred to as Jopie in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” wrote the memoir, which was first published in Dutch in 1990 and released in English by Arcadia Books in 2007. The book recalls the girls’ friendship at school and during the war, when van Maarsen believed the Frank family had escaped to Switzerland. Only after the war, in conversations with Otto Frank, did van Maarsen learn of Anne’s fate.

The film, “My Friend Anne Frank,” will follow the girls’ separate experiences during the war, including their internments in concentration camps. Developed by Nu Image/Millennium Films, the movie is set to be directed by Alberto Negrin, who made the Italian biopic “Perlasca,” based on the man who posed as a Spanish official to save Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.