Facts about The Doll Jackie had ‘hidden’ Anne’s doll and searched high and low to find her so that she could be photographed for the article. Her husband was searching in a cubby hole under the stairs for some paint and found two bubble-wrapped small parcels. Opening them up he found a black rag doll and the second was Anne’s doll. Above them was a paint brush tin full of turps (turpentine) with dirty brushes in it. The tin had tipped over and the turps and dirty paint had spilled and dried on the bubble wrap and tissue. Fortunately, the dolls were not harmed, except for Anne’s dolls’ hair which had been glued on. The wig was now detached (held into place by a single row of stitches) and brown marks left on the scalp area where the hair had been glued. Jackie sewed the hair in place, as she could not get the same glue dating back to the 1940’s, but remains of the glue can be seen if the wig is lifted. Also, the doll had two round sort of felt patches glued on her cheeks; these had no colour left in them; and left brown patches where they had been. Missing, is a small white collar. It was separate from the dress and held in place by four stitches at the back of the dolls’ head. These stitches can just be seen. The doll came with the red scarf which ties at the back. Possibly, the collar was removed to accommodate the scarf, explaining why the collar was not a permanent fixture. Anne’s doll had a hair slide but that was lost when the WI took the dolls on tour. The hook on the back of the dress, which held her neck button closed, broke, so the cotton hook holding the dress closed is new. The black beads on the shoes are replacement modern beads. The original shoe beads appeared to be black painted glass beads; these just crumbled entirely; there was no way they could be sewn back on. The doll itself is made of patterned squares of material (all the other dolls were made from plain fabric) but have faded so much it now appears plain fabric to the naked eye. At some point she had moth repellent sprayed on her, and Jackie attempted to sponge the smell of paint and turps off with tepid water, but apart from that, and the odd stitch, she’s had to put in, the doll is okay. Jackie revealed that she always intended to remove the demeaning yellow stars off the dolls dresses, but was fortunately advised not to do so.

The Other Camp Dolls Jackie had found some of the camp dolls dressed too long and shortened them; except Anne Franks’ doll. Being a child doll, her dress is exactly the same untouched length. As she grew up, she realized the historic importance of the dolls and attempted to redress her childhood mistakes, by putting them back to their former condition. Fortunately, only the Wessoloski doll had to have her skirt and pinny (pinafore) lengthened. Her neckline and sleeve endings were originally sewn directly onto the doll, so they did have to redress the slight deterioration that occurred and replaced her neckline and sleeve endings as near as possible to the original. Other Concentration Camp Dolls These six dolls are not the only ones around, of course. The Lilliput Antique Doll & Toy Museum in Brading on the Isle of Wight, has two camp dolls. In America, Inge Auerbacher, a camp survivor, (held in a concentration camp at Terezin, near Prague, from 1942 to 1945) gives lectures about her experiences of the Holocaust. During her story, she often mentions a doll that she had throughout her stay. It was a commercial doll, not handmade like the Camp Six, but she survived and is now on display at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The fifth doll (called Enigma) has very faded features, almost as if someone tried hard to obliterate them. Unfortunately, Enigma did suffer a lot of damage through dampness. So Jackie did a lot of reconstruction on her skirt and pinny, reproducing as faithfully as she could, the ribbons and colours. She was lightly washed as she had a dreadful damp plaster odour. There is a faint name: “de Winter BL 29”. Is this a name or a reference to the season? Jackie removed the yellow half triangle attached to the bodice as she felt the half star looked wrong. The Mary Slimak doll is still missing. [All the signatures on the dolls are in different handwriting and inks.]

More information about the meeting with Mr. Frank in 1978 Jackie took four dolls to show Mr. Frank, but did not tell him which was Anne’s. He himself picked Anne’s doll up, and said if Anne’s doll is one of these, it will be this one. He felt convinced that at some point this doll must have been in Anne’s possession. She may have made it, or got someone in the camp to make it. He said Anne was never lazy, so if she could not be employed reading or writing, she may have taken up sewing. Another reason why he felt strongly that it was her doll, was that the doll came from Belsen; Anne had been in Belsen, thus making the possibility of two Anne Frank’s being there then very remote. He also surmised that there was a possibility that someone rescuing the doll may have put the owner’s name on it. When Jackie offered the doll to Mr. Frank, he told her that he had many mementos of his dear Anne (although he’d given them all to the museum, bar one photo plus his deceased wife’s locker which had one lock of Margot’s hair and one of Anne’s) and these dolls had “crossed the divide, and a small child reached out and saved them; and in your keeping all these years, they have come to no harm. I would not be surprised if my Anne’s spirit had not played host to their final journey into your hands. You keep them safe my dear, just as you have done all these years and may God go with you.” During one of their other meetings, he gave her a baby photograph of his first wife in her mother’s arms. He offered to sign something to confirm he believed it was Anne’s doll, but Jackie felt his word was enough. Mr. Frank also asked Jackie the names of the other dolls. He recognized the names Wessoloski and Slimak and said Anne was at school with their daughters. Mr. Wessoloski ran a delicatessen in Amsterdam before the War and the Slimaks were shoe makers. The Wessoloski’s had two daughters and two sons, and the Slimaks a son and daughter. He thought that the Wessoloski sons could still be alive, as they were only 3 and 7 when the War broke out and the Wessoloski son’s went to Switzerland with an aunt and uncle. But the older Wessoloski girls wanted to stay with their other and school friends. (At one point Mr. Frank almost took his family to Switzerland with the same group the Wessoloski boys went with; a move he always regretted not making.) The Red Cross Drivers The three Red Cross workers mentioned in the original article were amongst six detachments of the Red Cross who entered Bergen-Belsen on the 23rd April, 1945: Miss Thompson (Smethwick Branch) Miss Johnson (London’s East End Branch) and Miss Smith (later Mrs. Bailey) who was only 19 at the time. Jackie met up with Mrs. Bailey, again in September of this year; she is now 84 years old. She and her friend turned up at Jackie’s door after an acquaintance had given her a copy of The Paperdoll Circle article. She gave Jackie new names of the people that they saved, and reminded her of other items they had been given. Miss Johnson was given a painting, and a hat, possibly a Christening hat. S. Smith Bailey some jewelry including a large ghetto coin; in this case intact as no one has bodged (bored) a hole in it. But they also picked up some items from the floor while in Belsen and Ms. Smith Bailey reminded Jackie that she’s given it to her in the early 80’s. Include, was a German passport belonging to a man with the surname of Masch. They tell us he was born in 1895 in Hamburg and appears to have served in both World wars. The stamps indicate he was moved frequently from area to area. The last entry is 1943. Did he die or was he invalided out at that time? Another item is a wartime wardens pass with the name Katharina Tay (born in 1921), and a Nazi swastika armband with a German stamp on the inside. (I’ve included it in a new photo of Anne’s doll.) The Role the Women’s Institution Played in identifying the doll From the mid 1950’s to about 1960, the WI borrowed 4 dolls (two belonged to Jackie’s sister) to give talks about the War. My grandmother gave them permission to make copies of the dolls to raffle. These copies were vetted to make sure they had not copied them the exact size, and of course the originals were signed on the backs anyway. Six copies of each were made (Jackie once saw one of the copied dolls in a second hand shop, and she now regrets not buying it.) In 1962 a Mrs. Headley borrowed the dolls again for another tour (this time in the south of England). She met a local writer in Cornwall who was very interested in the dolls and it was this person who identified the signature of Anne Frank. They did as much research as they could on the dolls, and if it were not for the WI, Jackie may never have known what she had. (Jackie was disappointed when Mrs. Headley revealed Anne’s doll, as it was the most unattractive in the group.) Jackie packed them away until they were briefly taken out in 1982 for an article in the local paper. Otherwise, they lay undisturbed until she happened to mention them to me (editor of magazine). The Markings These were incorrectly gives as ST917 in Part One. As you can see in the corresponding photo, they are “BL27 MSTG1(perhaps 4)7”. The markings could have been made by another party, but there is certainly enough similarity between the signatures to believe they are from the same hand. And what do the numbers signify? Could they be Anne’s tattoo ID number? The facts are these: On 3rd September 1944, Anne, along with her mother Edith, her sister Margot, and her father Otto, boarded the last transport from Westerbrok to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on 5th September with 1,019 Jews on board. Men and women were separated. The women selected from the transport were marked with numbers between A-25060 and A-25271. Records indicating their exact numbers have not been preserved. Approximately eight weeks later, in late October, Anne and Margot were transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen, where they both died sometime in March 1945. Shortly before the camp was liberated, the SS destroyed all registers of inmates. Though Anne’s death certificate documents her movements between camps, it does not include her tattoo ID number. The number on the doll is nothing like those allocated at Auschwitz, but of course she could have been given a new number in Belsen. So, although we know it is definitely a camp doll, short of a note from Anne tucked into the bodice of the dress, there is never going to be any concrete ‘proof’ that this is Anne Frank’s doll. But, the facts that are known, certainly indicate that she very probably was.