Nanette Blitz Konig

Nanette Konig-Blitz (born 1929) is a Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivor and former classmate of Anne Frank. She has lived in São Paulo, Brazil since 1953.[1][2] In 2015, she published a book about being a Belsen survivor called Eu Sobrevivi ao Holocausto.[3] 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 Anne Frank[4]

Nanette was born on 6 April 1929 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, daughter of Martijn Willem Blitz and Helene Victoria Davids.[5] 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 family was of Jewish origin and her father worked for the Amsterdamsche Bank. The Netherlands was occupied in May 1940 by the Nazis. At the beginning of 1941, Jewish students were assigned to Jewish designated schools; it was then that Nanette became a classmate of Anne Frank. [6]

The Blitz Family was arrested and taken to Westerbork transition camp. On 15 February 1944, they were deported to Bergen Belsen concentration camp.[7]

At the end of November 1944 Nanette's father died. At the beginning of December, Nanette's brother and mother were deported from Bergen-Belsen and she remained alone. Her brother died in Oranienburg concentration camp and her mother was deported to Beendorf salt mines as a slave labourer and died in April 1945 in a train that was on the way 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 the large women’s camp 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.[8]

I was all alone in the camp, so being reunited with someone I knew was something that made me unforgettably emotional, because love and friendship were our only means of hope amid chaos. One day, as I was walking outside the barrack area, I got closer to the barbed-wire fence that prevented me from having access to other parts of the camp. On the other side of the fence, I saw a face that looked familiar. It was Anne Frank! Anne looked as frail as I did. I still had my hair, but hers had been shaved. I only caught a glimpse of her, since we were in different camps and I could not get any closer. However, that was enough to motivate me, to want to see her and talk to her. We would certainly have a lot to share. --From: Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor - Classmate of Anne Frank by Nanette Blitz Konig

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, the disease which killed Margot and Anne Frank. During this period, Anne's father visited her to ask about his daughters. Later, Otto Frank 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 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 Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor - Classmate of Anne Frank by Nanette Blitz Konig was published by Amsterdam Publishers: it gave a detailed account of her experiences during World War II. The book won the Readers' Favorite Gold Medal Award in 2019.