Show Transcript

Did you ever read the book the Diary of Anne Frank?

I never have.

I know, it's crazy.

I guess my teachers never had it on the reading list, but therefore, I was so excited when I got the opportunity to interview Cara Wilson, Granite.

Because Cara, she has a story about Anne Frank from a perspective you've probably never heard before, even if you have read the book, because, see, Kara, she developed an amazing relationship with the father of Anne Frank, his name, Otto Frank.

And today, you're gonna get to hear that entire story, Kara's story, Anne Frank's story, Otto Frank's story.

You're gonna get to hear it all inside of today's episode.

And I am so excited to get to bring it to you.

So, my friend, I welcome you to episode 339.

Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life?

Cause those bad days, they're just doors to better days.

And that's exactly what we do here at Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Your host, Kevin Lowe, he's been flipping the script on his own life, turning over 20 years of being completely blind into straight up inspiration, motivation, and encouragement just for you.

So kick back, relax, and let me introduce you to your host, Kevin.

Hello.

I am in the studio today with Cara Wilson, Granite.

Cara, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Kevin.

I'm very happy to be here.

Oh, my goodness.

I am so excited to get to explore your story.

And I was trying to think, where's the best place for us to begin?

And I know that a big part of your story is going to revolve around kind of the story of Anne Frank and specifically her father.

And I don't want to assume that anybody listening to the podcast, which I have, people from all over the world that everybody knows the story of Anne Frank.

And I was hoping, if you wouldn't mind, to just take a few minutes to share a little bit about her and her story.

So it kind of gives the rest of our conversation some context.

Of course, I would love to do that.

Anne Frank was a little girl.

She was a German child in the 30s in Germany.

And that was a time when it was a terrible time for so many people, but in particular for the Jewish people.

A chancellor named Hitler took over.

He wanted to ethnically cleanse all of Europe of Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, people who disabled, people of color, people who are political politically against him.

It was a really horrible time.

But especially, especially the Jewish people.

He made them the target, the scapegoat of why people in Germany had lost their war and they were Hungry.

And everything bad that was happening to them, he said, was the Jewish people.

And so it was a time that it was horrible.

And so basically the father, Otto Frank, and the mother, Edith Frank, took their children, Anna and Margot out of Frankfurt, Germany, where they had lived all their lives.

Otto Frank had been a top ranking lieutenant in the World War I.

He didn't, they had a very beautiful life there.

They were, he considered himself a German, even over being a Jew.

But now their lives were very dangerous.

Quickly they, he tried to get them escape and they could not get out of the country, out of Europe.

So Otto Frank found a hiding place that I'm, I'm.

It's an abridged version, I'm telling you right now.

Of course, above his spice factory, he was an import, export, spice and preserve factory in Holland.

And in time he tried for his family to be as normal as possible, but the world was closing in on them and they had to go into hiding.

And they went into hiding above his spice factory with his family and in time his business partner and their son and a dentist, eight of them in hiding above the spice factory, hidden by his office workers, four of them who helped them.

And it was, it was amazing.

For two years and one month these people survived by the help of their non Jewish friends below who worked below.

But somebody betrayed them.

And in that time that Anne, they were in that hiding and they had tried to have as much normalcy as possible.

You know, try to be quiet while the factory workers were working below.

And Anna would write in her diary.

And she wrote nonstop.

She was there, she was 13 when she went in to the annex.

And she lived to be not even 16, but she was writing in her diary.

And she wrote after that.

When the diary is filled up.

Miep, who was the assistant to Otto Frank, gave her notebooks and notebooks.

She wrote prolifically.

Nobody knew what was in this because she was very private, she was funny.

She drove them crazy.

You know, she was a teenager trapped with a bunch of adults and her sister and Peter.

She wrote about them.

And in the most incredible way.

And bottom line, somebody betrayed them.

And they were captured.

August 4, 1944.

They were sent to the concentration camps and the only one who returned was Otto Frank.

It was a ghastly, ghastly story of their deaths and dying.

And when you read her the Miep, her, the assistant found the diary after the Nazis had left, there was her diary and all her writings across the floor.

Miep retrieved them, saved them, and she was going to save it for Anne when She returned.

But when that wasn't going to happen, she gave everything to Otto Frank and said, this is your daughter's legacy.

It was a devastating time for him because it was like a double death.

He really had.

He didn't really know is he was so close to Ann, but he didn't know that side of her.

And it's extraordinary.

And what's amazing, and I've talked to people, so many students from all over, and they all relate to her, no matter who they are, no matter what religion, no matter what race, she talks the voice of young people, and you can't believe that she didn't survive with her sister Margaret.

So, you know, the diary is like, she.

She told her father, I want to live on even after my death.

And that was why he had Her Words published in Time.

That's the story, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Such a.

Such a powerful story.

And for, I think, so many of us have read that book in school.

Yes.

Like elementary or middle school.

Absolutely.

Now, you ended up developing a relationship over a long period of time with her father, with Otto.

How did that even begin?

By the time the book the Darry Van Frank was published, that was the early 50s, it became a Broadway show.

It became so popular all over the world.

It was, like, amazing.

And then 20th Century Fox sent out talent scouts because they were going to do the movie the Diary Van Frank.

And they went all over the country trying to find someone who looked like a young Anne.

And I was at 12 years old.

I looked a lot like her.

And somebody said, would you like to audition for the part?

Of course, I went crazy.

I mean, you know, here I was in Southern California.

I wanted to be a dancer and an actor and all of that.

I was thrilled.

And it was the first time at age 12, that I even read the Diary of Anne Frank.

And I was so devastated.

I.

I'd never read anything about her.

It.

To me, it kept saying, did she die?

Is she alive?

And, you know, it was so wrenching to me.

And they said, no, this is a true story.

And no, she did not survive.

And so I did an audition.

I went to 20th Century Fox.

Well, of course, I didn't get the part.

I keep saying, oh, well, oh, well, you know, beautiful Millie Perkins got the part.

But I said, is Otto Frank still alive?

And they said, yes, he's still alive.

He's in Basel, Switzerland.

Well, could I write to him?

And they said, yes.

And they gave me his address.

And that was the beginning.

And he and his second wife, Fritzi, who he met Coming back from the camps, became his wife.

And she was somebody very important in my life as well.

I started writing to him, and basically it became not just, you know, his first letter to me was, thank you.

Very short and sweet.

I can't, you know, thank you for writing to me.

I'm very busy writing to, you know, young people all over, but please do good in Anne's name.

It was that sort of bye, bye.

And I wrote him back right away, that's okay, Mr.

Frank.

You don't have to write to me.

I just want to write to you.

And so I think he realized in time, this kid's not going away.

I'm going to write to her.

And so he did.

He became like a grandfather.

I poured out my heart.

I told him everything about my life and questions and everything.

And he guided me throughout my life, nearly 20 years of my life.

And we did finally meet in person.

But it was a very, you know, he's very transformative.

And what he gave me is what I want to share with others.

He was a man of hope and a tremendous amount of hope.

And I'll tell you, Kevin, that the key letter that changed my soul and lifted me was in the 60s when Martin Luther King was assassinated and Robert Kennedy was assassinated and President Kennedy was assassinated.

We had the Vietnam War, we had race riots.

I couldn't believe what was going on in our world, and I was devastated.

And I wrote to him and I said, I don't know why you speak of hope so much, Otto Frank, because I have none.

And I will never bring a child into a world this cruel.

And he wrote back to me and he said, even if you believe the end of the world would be imminent, Kara, you still plant a tree today.

Never give up hope.

And he had two trees planted in my name to punctuate that.

And it meant more to me than anything because he knew nature means so much to me.

But it does mean so much.

It's sort of like even when we go through the hopeless times that we're facing in this world today, to me, Mother Nature is the great healer, and we cannot give up hope.

Yes.

You know, we can't.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hope is everything.

It is everything.

Kevin.

Yes.

Now, out of curiosity, I mean, you were just a teenage girl, a young teenage girl.

What made you.

I mean, especially.

You didn't get the part.

But what made you want to write, to reach out to her father?

I fell in love with him.

He was like, you know, my father was a good man.

As a kind person, I wanted that relationship that Anne had with her father.

I wanted this man.

I wanted his full attention.

I wanted his time.

I never knew my grandfather's.

To me, he represented everything that a father was.

And of course, looking at it later in as an adult, I realized of course he was all of that Fred.

He was trapped inside, you know, they were hiding.

And so he had been a businessman, he wouldn't have had the time either.

But because he was there with them.

He was their teacher, he was their confidant.

He was everything.

And to me he was their everything.

And I loved his relationship with.

And it really moved me.

He was like To Kill a Mockingbird is also one of my favorite.

He was my Atticus, you know, it's just that I loved his compassion, his caring and I just, I felt I needed to talk to him.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Now, during the time that you spent this time writing back and forth, did you ever tell your family, your friends about this?

I did, you know, some of them and some of them understood.

It wasn't until really recently when I start have been giving talks all over that people, you know, really, really care about this story.

At the time, my father didn't really know.

He was busy.

Later on he felt a little, I think a little jealous.

But it's sort of like, that's fine.

I had this wonderful relationship.

It was just a very special relationship.

And I felt I could tell him anything.

And he was so patient and kind with me.

The way he.

And he validated it didn't, you know, later when I saw my letters, you know, it was almost embarrassing.

I every.

Everything was exclamation points and blah, blah, blah.

And I thought, oh my God, you know, this man was so kind.

But it was only later, later, later Kevin, when I finally met him in person, would I realize how much he validated not only myself, but the world of children that reached out to him.

He gave us.

When he opened up this cupboard door when we finally were together and I saw from ceiling to floor, boxes and boxes and boxes, thousands of letters from young people all over the world.

And he answered every one of us.

And then he took this huge box, put it in front of me and said, these are your letters.

And so he saved, he validated me, saved me.

And you know, and that's what he did for all of us.

I mean, one of the, one of them, two of them are like, I call them my brothers.

The long time correspondence with Otto Frank.

One became an artist and the other one became a priest.

And so, yeah, they're my brothers.

Father John Neiman and Ryan Cooper, and I love them dearly.

And they have their own extraordinary stories about Otto Frank.

Yeah.

Wow.

Now tell me the story about finally getting to meet Otto.

Oh, well, that's good.

You know, I've told that story so many times, and each time it's going to make me cry.

I'm sorry.

You're going to make me cry, Kevin.

Well, you know, coming from Hollywood, you know, that world, everything in my life, it still is scene A and scene B.

Scene A is the way I wish life would be.

And scene B is the backup scene.

It could never be that good, but, you know, oh, well, I'll do that.

And so finally, when I was heading first to Amsterdam to meet Miep, you know, Miep was his assistant, and Kevin, she's a story all on her own.

Miep Gies is a hero.

And she would get upset.

No, I'm not.

I said, oh, yes, you are.

You know, you see, they've done movies about her and documentaries.

She was extraordinary human being, and she was the one.

She and her husband Jan, took me through the Anne Frank house and told me everything.

So many of the things I know now are because of me.

And so we had this wonderful time together.

She says, well, you better get to Basel because Otto and Fritzi are waiting for you.

And so I practiced on this train going to Basel, Switzerland, after riding Basel a million times, it seems on this train.

And I'm practicing.

Scene A was I wanted him to be everything I wanted him to be, you know, that we would hug each other and it would be so emotional, and he would be this beautiful soul that I love so much.

But scene B was, you know, I'm a busy man, Cara, you know, let's have some tea.

And I, you know, I must go.

It was that, you know, I thought, oh, it can't be that.

I want it to be seen.

A And finally, Basel station doors open, trains open.

And there's Fritzie.

And we recognized each other right away.

Oh, my God.

We were hugging each other.

And I said, where's.

Where's Otto Fritzi?

She says, there he is.

And there he was, Kevin, standing on the platform.

A very tall man.

You could see where he could have been a Prussian soldier.

He carried himself so tall and erected, you know, very elegant with his suit and tie and shirt.

And everything about him had class and elegance.

And he turns to me, arms outspread.

K.

At last.

It was CN it was scene A.

It was incredible.

I'll never.

We just.

It was so emotional.

And we went back to their place.

And I was talking, talking, talking, talking nonstop.

And he showed me the family albums that Meep had recovered as well, and of the children.

And we were saying everything there was.

You know, I asked him a million questions, the two pivotal ones, and I wish I had more time with him and more things to talk to him about, but I was so overwhelmed.

But there was two things that stand out in my mind.

One, he showed me this picture, this little snapshot, and they were.

I said, who is that, Otto?

And he said, ah, those little boys in a sandbox.

Adorable, little golden haired boys in a sandbox.

They were my friends.

That is me as a child.

And all of those little boys grew up to become Nazis.

And that was like a gut punch, because those children were not Nazis.

They learned that.

They became that.

You know, that's something.

You know, you learn cruelty, you learn fear.

But those beautiful little children were not that.

And it really, really affected me.

And the other part, when I.

Not only the extraordinary, seeing all the letters, which was just floored me, but when I asked him, otto, do you know who betrayed you?

And he turned to me and he just said, it doesn't matter.

And I've learned since that he probably did know who it was.

But at the time I met him, it was three years before he died.

He.

When it first.

When he was first liberated, it mattered extraordinarily.

He did everything he could to find out, what is it?

Somebody he knew.

There were many suspects, and he went to trials, he tried to find out who did this.

And by the time I met him, there was peace.

You could see the pain in his eyes.

But he had let it go.