Bloeme Evers-Emden

Bloeme Evers-Emden (; ; 5 July 1926 – 18 July 2016) was a Dutch lecturer and child psychologist who extensively researched the phenomenon of "hidden children" during World War II and wrote four books on the subject in the 1990s. Her interest in the topic grew out of her own experiences during World War II, when she was forced to go into hiding from the Nazis and was subsequently arrested and deported to Auschwitz on the last transport leaving the Westerbork transit camp on 3 September 1944. Together with her on the train were Anne Frank and her family, whom she had known in Amsterdam. She was liberated on 8 May 1945.

In the 1980s, Evers-Emden earned a doctorate in developmental psychology and began interviewing and writing about the phenomenon of "hidden children" from the points of view of the children, their biological parents, their non-Jewish foster parents, and their non-Jewish foster siblings. She was also interviewed for several television documentaries on her remembrances of Anne Frank and her family before they went into hiding and after they were sent to Auschwitz.

Early life Bloeme Emden was born on 5 July 1926 in Amsterdam Her younger sister, Via Roosje, was born 29 May 1932.

In 1941, Bloeme attended the Jewish lyceum, where she befriended Anne Frank and her sister, Margot. Bloeme was in the same grade as Margot, but in a different class. Bloeme saw Anne, Margot and their mother regularly in Auschwitz, although she was part of a separate group of eight women who stayed together, encouraging and helping one another. In October 1944, Bloeme and her group were selected for transfer to the Liebau labor camp in Upper Silesia. For the filming of the 1995 BBC documentary Anne Frank Remembered, Bloeme recalled that Anne, Margot, and their mother, Edith, also planned to join the transport, but Anne was prohibited from joining because she had developed scabies. Her mother and sister opted to stay with her, and Bloeme went on without them.

Bloeme was liberated by the Soviets at Liebau on 8 May 1945. She and a small group of friends began walking back to the Netherlands on foot, arriving six weeks later. She discovered that her parents and sister had been deported to the Sobibor extermination camp, where they all perished. She began studying psychology part-time and became a lecturer in psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 1973, earning her doctorate in the late 1980s.

In 1991, she was decorated by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

Her son, Raphael Evers, is the Rabbi of Düsseldorf.

Evers-Emden died on 18 July 2016, less than two weeks after her 90th birthday. ('Hidden During the War: A Closed-Off Past?'), 1995 ('Shattered Existence'), 1996 translated into Hebrew by Mechel Jamenfeld as Hayim Pegumim (Tel Aviv, 2000) ('Sharing Your Parents'), 1999 ('Jewish Anthology: Sketches from an ordinary Jewish life') ('Jewish Anthology Pieces: Columns about life')