Annexed - Sharon Dogar

                                                              

We all know the story inside and out of Anne Frank, her family and the Van Pels who stayed hidden in the attic at the beginning of World War II when Hitler was out to kill all Jews but what about the side of the story from Peter, the son of the Van Pels.

Review : Annexed - Sharon Dogar - Sept/Oct 2010

When we think of World War II and the family that hid in the attic , we automatically think of Anne Frank's family but in fact there were two families hidden , the Franks and the Van Pels. Annexed tells the story of the war and what it was like living in the annexe from Peter Van Pel's point of view. At the start of the novel the story focuses on Peter's girlfriend and Margot's friend Liese and we read about how one night Peter snuck out to see Liese and watched from the shadows the Gestapo and MP's take her away in their vehicles. The book then fast forwards to the day the Van Pels moved into the Annexe along with Anne Frank's family. Reading the book it seems like there was a level of superiority between the Franks and the Van Pels with Peter's family being the lesser. We watch over the course of the novel the relationship between Peter and Anne transition from a hate to a love and we read as the pressure of the war and how hard it was to stay hidden from trouble. For Peter Van Pel he was Anne Frank's first and only love as we all know the story of how she died at the age of fifteen . For anyone who has read Anne Frank's diary we know it ended August 4th 1944 , however Annexed takes us beyond that date chronicling Peter's life and experiences as he continues to live past the betrayal and Nazi death camps.
Peter lived until he was 18 and died somewhere between April 11th - May 1945.
Sharon Dogar's Annexed is a wonderful mixture of fact woven into fiction to give it an historically accurate feel.
This is one book that every teen studying World War II and the Holocaust should add to their reading lists.