Michaelis was born in Berlin in , and he still speaks with a slight German accent. He remembers that Peter owned an expensive pen, perhaps the one in his pocket in the photograph, possibly bought for him by his mother's new partner it is believed his father had separated from his mother before the war and moved to the United States.
Michaelis also remembers the comfort he felt from being with his friend the day after Kristallnacht, the evening in November when Jewish homes, shops and synagogues were vandalised throughout Germany and thousands of Jews were escorted to the camps. You get the impression from her mentions of him that it was all to do with appearance, but I'm sure she would have been bored with him if he'd been stupid.
Michaelis and Schiff last saw each other in the summer of Michaelis came to England on the Kindertransport, going to school first in Sussex and then attending Bryanston School in Dorset. Schiff, accompanied by his mother, went to Amsterdam.
But before the boys parted they exchanged photographs. Michaelis's picture was taken by a friend of his mother at his home, while Schiff's may have been taken at a professional studio. We were at my home, but to be together as long as possible I walked with him to his home, about 25 minutes' walk.
A few years later the photograph was transferred to a larger book, where it sat undisturbed alongside other photos and correspondence for several decades.
When he first read Anne Frank's diary in the Fifties, Michaelis had suspected that the Peter Schiff in the book was the same boy he had once known.
He imagined that Schiff had perished in a concentration camp, but he couldn't confirm this either. In the last few years, however, things have come into focus. In he received a copy of Aktuell, a publication sent to refugees from Berlin scattered throughout the world. It carried a class photograph from Holdheim School taken in the spring of , and with it a request for information regarding any of the 25 people pictured in it with their thick winter coats and sunny dispositions.
Michaelis recognised it as his class: there he was, number 18, leaning to his left so we could get a good look at him. To his right in the same row, at number 10, was Peter Schiff. But Michaelis had more important things on his mind at the time: his wife Ann had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. He put the magazine to one side, and forgot about it. In May his wife was told there was nothing more they could do for her.
She said she would like to pay a final visit to Berlin, but this may have been as much for his benefit as for hers: she was born in London in , and was not Jewish. They had visited the city not long after the wall came down, at a time when large parts of it still resembled a building site, and Ann said she wanted to see what had been built. They visited the Jewish Museum, and she bought a copy of Anne Frank's diary. She died four months after their visit.
Last summer, shortly before his two children had found him sheltered accommodation, Michaelis picked up Anne Frank's diary again and began to wonder. That seemed very odd, as his [good] looks are at the heart of his story. I thought that people might be interested in my picture. Two remembered Peter Schiff well: 'He was a very likeable and friendly boy,' wrote Ursula Meyer nee Totschek, number six in the photograph , who now lives in Maryland, 'and I think I had a bit of a crush on him.
He once made Dr Gottschalk [the rabbi to the right of the picture] so angry that he hit him. When Michaelis searched the internet he found conflicting information, but his research did at least confirm Schiff's date of birth, and that he and Anne Frank shared the same friend. Michaelis called the Anne Frank Trust in London: they said they didn't have a picture of Peter Schiff and knew very little about him.
Then he wrote to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam the preserved building where she and her family hid - an educational centre that attracted more than 1m visitors last year , and staff confirmed that they didn't have a picture. They encouraged Michaelis to visit, and earlier this year he made the trip with his children and his grandchildren, and his photograph. From 20 May onwards, Anne rewrote a large part of her diary.
She planned to publish this book about her time in the Secret Annex after the war. What are the most striking differences between the two versions? The most striking example was her love for Peter van Pels. In the rewritten version, she left out this entire letter.
By the time Anne was busy rewriting her diary, her love for Peter had cooled considerably and she was a little disappointed with him. He had not become the friend she had hoped for.
The relationship between Anne and her mother was problematic. Their personalities were incompatible, and they often clashed. But they could not avoid each other in the Secret Annex. In her diary, Anne had often written harshly about her mother. Leafing through her diary, she was sometimes taken aback by her own harsh words. In the rewritten version, Anne was kinder, and some passages were omitted altogether. I usually keep my mouth shut if I get annoyed, and so does she, so we appear to get on much better together.
She writes that her wish is to become a famous journalist and writer. Frank has lost a bet with Mrs. Anne hears that anti-Semitism is becoming more common among the Dutch, and she is deeply disheartened.
She grows depressed again and wonders if it would not have been better to suffer a quick death rather than go into hiding. She counteracts this thought by writing that they all love life too much. The residents of the annex are very excited. Near the end of July, Anne writes about an assassination attempt on Hitler and hopes it is proof that the Germans want to stop the war themselves.
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