Audrey Hepburn and Anne Frank: Shared Threads of Resilience in WWII

Image by Flybynight from Pixabay

Today, I wanted to share with you a fascinating article that delves into the hidden wartime history of the iconic actress Audrey Hepburn. As we commemorate Anne Frank's birthday and as a follow-up to this article I just published in The Planet newsletter, it is equally important to shed light on other individuals whose stories intersected with the tumultuous times of World War II.

When I started writing yesterday, my original idea was to compare Anne's life to the lives of several others, all also born in 1929, like Audrey Hepburn and Martin Luther King Jr. To my surprise, I found intricate threads between their lives. Born in the same year, their lives are woven together by resilience, compassion, and a shared commitment to justice.

Resurgence of fascism

I realize it is an unlikely combination, but their stories are each in their own right relevant in a time where we navigate a world grappling with the resurgence of fascism.

I never finished the train of thought. As happens so often, my writing drifted in another direction. You may be surprised that I considered bringing Audrey Hepburn into this article. How can one connect an association of Breakfast at Tiffany's to the horrors of Nazism?

I can't, but I started my search from a different angle last night. I was amazed at the long life of Anne's friend Hannah Pick-Goslar compared to Anne's 15 years, which brought me to other famous people of her generation.

Born in the same year (Frank, Hepburn, and King in 1929 and Pick-Goslar in late 1928), they historically belonged to very different periods. Anne Frank belongs in the 1940s, while Martin Luther King is associated with the late fifties and 1960s. That is also the time of Hepburn, but unlike King, after another hate-based murder, she could continue to dedicate much of her time to humanitarian work in the decades after that. I would place Pick-Goslar both into the 1940s and in 2022-2023, when she became much better known after her book was published posthumously shortly after she died in 2022.

Supporting the resistance

Audrey Hepburn's mother, Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch baroness, and she and Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, were second cousins. So this means that Audrey Hepburn and Anne Frank were second cousins once removed. During World War II, Audrey Hepburn and Anne Frank both lived in the Netherlands, just 60 miles away from each other. Hepburn lived in the Arnhem area and supported the resistance by bringing food and messages to downed pilots.