Bep Voskuijl : biography

Elisabeth "Bep" Voskuijl () (Elli Vossen) (5 July 1919, Amsterdam – 6 May 1983, Amsterdam) helped conceal Anne Frank and her family from Nazi persecution during the occupation of the Netherlands.

References and further reading

Biography

Bep was born in :Amsterdam. She was one of the eight children of Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl and Mrs Voskuijl.

She was hired by Otto Frank in 1937 as a secretary and by 1942 was the administration manager of his company, Opekta, based at 263 Prinsengracht, the address which would become the Frank family’s hiding place. Elisabeth was a young typist who agreed to help bring provisions to his family and four other people concealed in the back rooms of the office building, from July 1942, until their betrayal and arrest on 4 August 1944. She also ordered correspondence courses, such as shorthand and Latin for those in hiding. During the Gestapo raid she managed to escape with a few documents which would have incriminated their black market contacts, but returned to assist Miep Gies in collecting the personal possessions of the captured Jews, amongst which were Anne Frank’s diaries and manuscripts.

She left the company after her marriage to Cornelius van Wijk on 15 May 1946 and they went on to have four children: Ton, Cor, Joop, and a daughter, Anne-Marie, born in 1960, who was named after Anne.

After World War II

She was honoured in later years for her activities during the Second World War, but disliked publicity and gave few interviews about her association with Anne Frank. She did, however, remain in touch with Otto Frank until his death and kept a scrapbook of articles about Anne and her diary.