Shortly before his death, Victor Kugler was still mentally checking up on Anne Frank upstairs.
By ABIGAIL KLEINVictor Kugler 88 224(photo credit: Courtesy )Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank
By Eda Shapiro & Rick Kardonne
Gefen
144 pages; $14.95
Among the hundreds of names memorialized on Yad Vashem's Avenue of the Righteous, few are well known - Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and Corrie Ten Boom among them. Fewer still are overshadowed by the name recognition of the Jews they hid. Victor Kugler, the "Mr. Kraler" of Anne Frank's diary, probably would not have been the subject of a book had Anne's writings not become world famous.
This is not to detract in any way from Kugler's compelling story. Canadian journalist/composer Rick Kardonne was correct in concluding that the typewritten memoirs he was shown in 1996 were "of historical importance." These memoirs, compiled over years of conversations with Kugler by writer Eda Shapiro, had been published by Yad Vashem in 1979 and the Toronto Sun in 1988.
Now that both Shapiro and Kugler are no longer alive, Shapiro's widower encouraged Kardonne to broaden the scope of the project. Kardonne readily accepted the challenge and presents here an account of Kugler's life. Its foundation is Shapiro's work - hence her name preceding Kardonne's as co-author - but it also incorporates historical details and reminiscences of others.
As general manager of Otto Frank's two Amsterdam businesses, it had fallen to Kugler to shield Frank and his wife and two daughters from the approaching German forces. At the same time, Kugler accepted responsibility for keeping Frank's firms afloat. Both tasks entailed overwhelming risks and difficult logistics.
Kugler, an Austrian-born naval veteran who had moved to Amsterdam after World War I, "was neither a diplomat nor a prominent industrialist with connections. He was not an academic... Rather, this man was an ordinary business manager with a simple, humane conscience."
When Frank told Kugler on July 6, 1942, that "the time has come for us to hide," Kugler was prepared. For the previous year, he and Johannes Kleiman, another trusted Frank employee, had been readying the "Secret Annex" on the upper two floors of Frank's warehouse.
For two years, the family - plus four additional Jews - survived undetected in the annex, due to diligent care taken by Kugler, Kleiman and the young front-office workers, Miep Gies and Elli Vossen (Gies is also memorialized on the Avenue of the Righteous).
Luck ran out on August 4, 1944, when the Gestapo discovered the annex occupants on an informant's tip. Not only were the Franks and friends arrested, but so were Kugler and Kleiman - as punishment for hiding Jews.
Kardonne details Kugler's eight months in prisons, concentration and forced-labor camps, where his quick wits and deep Lutheran faith sustained him. As an office boy for the German commander of one such camp, Kugler daringly fudged roll-call numbers to obtain more food for the starved workers.
He eventually escaped and returned to Amsterdam, where he found his wife - who had never known of his dangerous activities - terminally ill. Kugler later remarried and made a new life in Toronto as an insurance salesman.
With the publicity surrounding The Diary of a Young Girl in 1957, Kugler slowly started talking about his role in the events. Several prominent Toronto Jews - among them Eda Shapiro - expended many efforts to ensure that Kugler would be recognized locally and at Yad Vashem for his heroism, and also provided for as he grew older and was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.
One of these Toronto patrons recalled that shortly before his death, a confused Kugler came to visit and started ascending the steps to her second floor. His wife asked him where he was heading. "I'm just going upstairs to check that the people are all right," Kugler reportedly responded.
The book includes insights into the Dutch experience during World War II, in part to explain how Holland's Jews suffered greater losses than in any other German-occupied country in Western Europe - just 35,000 survived from a previous population of 140,000. Kardonne also points out that the proportion of Righteous Gentiles from The Netherlands is higher than from those other countries.
These additions, as well as time lines and family photos of Kugler, enhance an already interesting work. The book is informative and highly readable despite its flaws, which include a slightly awkward organization and typographical oddities such as the superfluous use of italics.
The subtext is a paean to Toronto and its Jewish community, of which Kardonne is obviously proud. Kugler received many accolades there before his death in 1981.
In 1977, he received the Munk Brotherhood Award of $10,000 from the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews at a gala in the posh Royal York Hotel. Kugler, overcome with emotion, was unable to respond. So Claus van Banning, the vice-consul from The Netherlands, explained to the distinguished guests why, in Kugler's words, the man had risked everything in an attempt to save eight Jews.
"'They were my friends' is how Kugler answers," van Banning said. "'What could I do?'"
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