Anne Frank's beau recalls 'articulate' girl

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HACKENSACK, N.J. — "It was a Sunday afternoon — a very sunny day in summer. The weather was beautiful. I knocked on Anne's door, but no one was there," says Ed Silverberg, now 78 and silver-haired.

Silverberg was Anne Frank's beau before her disappearance on July 6, 1942. He didn't know that Anne and her family had gone into hiding to escape the Nazis during World War II.

"I wasn't terribly surprised," the Hackensack man said. "It wasn't unusual at that time for Jewish families to disappear. I thought, 'Maybe they got away.' "

Not until two years after the war did Silverberg learn of Anne's fate, when her father, Otto — the only member of the Frank family to survive — sent Silverberg a copy of her published diary, "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl." Silverberg is mentioned by name and called by his nickname, "Hello," in the diary's opening pages.

Silverberg in recent weeks has been involved in commemorations set to coincide with what would have been Anne's 75th birthday tomorrow. He was interviewed on television and recently spoke at an opening reception for a new photo exhibit, "Anne Frank: A Private Photo Album," at the Kraushaar Galleries in Manhattan. The images, most of which never have been on display, were taken by Otto Frank of his family before the war.

"The exhibit touched me," Silverberg said. "To see the photos and the beaches we all went to — the whole idea, of showing the Frank family as innocent children, is moving."

And the photos revived memories of Anne, although their time together was brief and their dates limited by f anti-Semitic laws.

"We couldn't go to the movies, we couldn't go to the parks," he said. "The only place we were allowed to go to was the Oasis, which was an ice-cream parlor."

At the time, he was 16 and she was 13. Yet Anne acted older than her years, he said.

"Anne was unusually articulate, compared to other girls her age," Silverberg said. "She made an impression. I became fascinated with her."

Silverberg said he attempted to go to Amsterdam to visit Otto Frank after the war. Without a passport, however, he was unable to enter the country.

In 1948, Silverberg emigrated to the United States, where he took up residence in Dutchess County, N.Y., before marrying his wife, Marlyse, also a Holocaust survivor. After rearing two children in Riverdale, N.Y., he and his wife moved to Hackensack to be closer to his job; he was part-owner of a company that manufactured equipment for medical-research laboratories.

That Silverberg survived the Holocaust by escaping to Belgium with a false ID was, in his words, "dumb luck."

Overnight, German-born Helmuth Silberberg became Brussels-born Edmond Mertens. After the war, he combined the two names, with a slight alteration to the spelling of his last name.

Anne's memory today represents more than one young girl.

"It's most of the kids I played with in my childhood and went to school with in Jewish elementary school in Germany," Silverberg said. "The majority perished in camps. Anne Frank is a reminder of where we came from — and all the other kids (who died)."