Finding Hope in Letters from Otto Frank: How Anne Frank's Father Inspired a New Generation

Because Kara, 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.

SPEAKER_02: Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life?

Because 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 Lowe.

SPEAKER_03: I am in the studio today with Kara Wilson and Granit.

Kara, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Kevin.

I'm very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.

I am so excited to begin 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 gonna revolve around kind of the story of Anne Frank and specifically her 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.

SPEAKER_01: Of course, I would love to do that.

Anne Frank was a little girl, uh, 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 uh named Hitler took over.

He wanted to ethnically cleanse all of Europe of Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, people who disable, 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 uh they had a very beautiful life there.

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

But now their lives were very dangerous.

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

So uh Otto Frank found a hiding place, and I'm I'm it's an abridged version, I'm telling you right now.

SPEAKER_00: Of course.

SPEAKER_01: Above his spice factory, he was an import-export, spice and preserve factory in uh Holland.

And in time, he tried to for his family to be as normal as possible, but the world was closing in on them, and he 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 uh 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, tried to be quiet while the factory workers were working below, and Anna would write in her diary, and she wrote nonstop.

She was they were she was 13 when she went into the uh 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, uh Meep, 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, you know, trapped with a bunch of you know adults and her sister and Peter.

She wrote about them in the most incredible way.

And bottom line, somebody betrayed them, and they were captured August 4th, 1944.

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

Uh it was a ghastly, ghastly story of their death and dying.

And when you read her, the uh Meep, her the assistant, found the diary after the Nazis had left.

There was her diary and all her writings across the floor.

Meep 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 hadn't he didn't really know.

He was so close to Anne, 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 Market.

So, you know, uh the diary ha is like she's 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.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, such a such a powerful story.

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

Yes.

In 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?

SPEAKER_01: By the time the book, The Diary of Van Frank, was published in came that was the early 50s, it became a Broadway show.

It became so popular all over the world.

It was 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 the 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, I, 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 kept saying, Did she die?

Is she alive?

And you know, it was so uh 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, no, well, oh well, you know, beautiful Mill Millie Bergman's got the part.

But I 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 uh 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 I 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 gonna write to, 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, the the key letter that changed my soul and lifted me was in the 60s when Martin Luther King was assassinated and uh Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and our 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 in this world today, to me, Mother Nature is the is the great healer, and we cannot give up hope.

unknown: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: You know, we can't.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.

Hope is everything.

SPEAKER_01: It is everything, Kevin.

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

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

What 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?

SPEAKER_01: 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 uh uh this this man.

I wanted his full attention, I wanted his time.

I never knew my grandfathers.

To me, he represented everything that a father was.

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

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 Anne.

It really moved me.

He was like uh Techilla Makingerd is also one of my favorite with he was my atticus.

You know, he it's just that I loved his compassion, his caring.

And uh I I just I felt I needed to talk to him.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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

SPEAKER_01: I did.

You know, some of them and some of them understood.

It it wasn't until risk 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, 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, uh, 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, he 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 are like, I call them my brothers.

The longtime correspondence with Otto Frank.

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

And uh so, yeah, they're my brothers, Father John Neiman and Ryan Cooper.

And uh I love them dearly.

And they have their own extraordinary stories about Otto Frank.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

Wow.

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

SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, that's good, you know.

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

I'm sorry.

You're gonna make me cry, Kevin.

Well, you know, because coming from Hollywood, you know, uh 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.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: And so finally, when I was heading first to Amsterdam to meet Meep.

You know, Meep was his assistant.

And Kevin, she's a story all on her own.

Meep Geese 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 an 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 meat.

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 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 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, oh, you know, I'm a busy man, gotta, you know, let's have some tea, and I, you know, I must go.

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

I wanted to be scene A, and finally, Basel station, doors open, trains open, and there's Fritzi, and we recognized each other right away.

Oh my God, we were hugging each other.

And she, I said, Where's where's Otto Fritzy?

She says, There he is.

And there he was, Kevin, standing on the platform, a very tall man.

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

He carried himself so tall and erect and, you know, very elegant with a suit and tie and shirt and everything about him had class and elegance.

And he turns to me, arms outspread, cottage at last.

It was scene A.

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 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, Oh, those little boys in a sandbox, adorable little golden-haired boys in a sandbox.

He said, 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 gut puts, because those children were not Nazis.

They learned that.

They became that.

You know, that's something you know, you you 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 s not only the the the extraordinary seeing all the 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 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.

It wasn't going to do anything any good.

And it would have destroyed the innocent people around whoever it was who betrayed them, and mostly the children of this person.

So he just said to me, it doesn't matter.

And that doesn't matter, has resonated with me throughout my life.

Because everything in my life is, oh my God, this matters.

This matters, it matters.

And I can hear Otto saying, Does it really?

Does it really matter?

Can you let it go?

And most of the time we can.

SPEAKER_03: Wow.

I mean, is there not such wisdom in that very statement alone?

SPEAKER_01: Isn't it true?

SPEAKER_03: I mean, talk about setting you free.

You know, to acknowledge, does it really matter?

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

SPEAKER_03: Wow.

Now, speaking about the thing of who betrayed them, I actually read, preparing for our interview day, that all these letters years later would actually be used in some type of investigation into this.

SPEAKER_01: That's true.

Yeah, talk to me about that.

That was a recent discovery, let me tell you.

I had no idea.

I was contacted by his name is Vince Pankock.

He's absolutely become a very dear friend of mine.

A very he was a retired FBI agent, and he was part of this investigation.

He had been retired, and it was a cold case investigation that he was asked, would you help us see if we can find who the betrayer was?

So he was involved in extensive, I mean, we're talking about years of trying, you know, uncovering every single there's so many people I could talk to you about who are suspect, even now, that they have very good cases.

There's many of them who you'd say, well, he has to be uh wonderful book by uh Carol Ann Lee wrote The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, who absolutely the family believes this is the Tony Allers, a Dutch Nazi who was blackmailing Otto Frank.

Very good case against him.

There's so many that I could talk about.

But the main thing was that why my letters were integral is that they felt that they found Otto Frank was given the name when he came back when he was liberated in in 45.

Somebody gave him a name of somebody who was the betrayer.

And it was not somebody who knew them, but he was head uh of the um Jewish council, and he basically was given a list of buildings.

If I understand it clearly, it's a little complicated for me, but where there might be Jews hidden.

So I think what I understand is that he gave this to the Nazis that he worked with to protect his own family.

He was a father also, but his name was given to Otto Frank by a friend of Otto's, and Otto typed that name down and hid it, put it away.

It was one of those things.

But why uh Vince contacted me was that he said, Would you mind?

Would you be able to, if we promise that we will take good care of your letters, would you send your first letters to us in Europe for us to analyze?

Because we believe would Otto Frank type this name, it would have been on a typewriter with the same font as your letters had.

They wanted to assess the timing, the date, the font, the typewriter was all essential.

But he didn't tell me the details.

He just said, May we analyze your letters?

And I said, yes.

He says, We're I will register them.

And he was so nervous when he went to Amsterdam.

He waited for this plane, which was delayed because my letters were on there.

And he was absolutely freaking out.

Oh my God, we've lost her letters.

You know, they arrived and they sent them off to us, you know, this specialist in Germany to analyze those early letters.

And when Vince wrote back to me, he was beyond excited.

Thank you so much.

We have what we need.

And I cannot tell you what it is.

You know, and so it was much later that I learned it was it was the font, it was the typewriter, it was that what they were looking at.

And they felt that they had what they needed.

Now, again, there are many, many theories going around, but I felt Rosemary Sullivan's book was brilliant.

And Vince Van Koch is extraordinary.

You you'll want to talk to him sometime, Kevin, because he uh is uh walking atlas.

He's uh you know a scholar on this, and the work that he put into this is amazing.

So ultimately they feel that that is it, but again, you can't 100% say anything, you know, that this is definitively, but he has some very good proof.

And and apparently my letters had something to do with it, which was beyond anything I could even fathom.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.

How many years after, maybe after Otto passed away, did this happen where they contacted you about the letters?

SPEAKER_01: This was recently.

This was a few years ago.

SPEAKER_03: Okay.

Wow.

Wow, even more crazy that it was that long.

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

That's right.

Well, his I guess the cold case, I don't know the dates.

He was working on it maybe 10 years, but as they were going through that and going through that, then they thought, okay, they were zeroing in on the fact that he typed this down.

He wrote it down.

And that's where they were just zeroing in, zeroing in.

And so when he he found me, it was, you know, so we have since we've all met, we have uh uh Father John and Ryan and and Vince and I, we we call ourselves the Automobilers.

We've given talks together.

And um they each have amazing points of view.

We all have our own perspective of Otto Frank and how we did that.

But um, yes, I mean we have our own theories.

And uh after a while, you know, you think this person could absolutely have done it, or that person, or that person.

And Otto Frank said, you know, there were at least 250 people who knew they were in hiding.

It could have been an you know an accident.

Some people say it was an absolute accident, that they were discovered.

One of the things that Vince said, and it I found it profoundly fascinating, was when the Nazis and the Dutch, the Dutch Nazis, they called them the Green Police and the head Nazi Silberbauer, on August 4th were went to the uh office workers and said, uh, give us the keys, show us, you know, they they knew.

Now they found out that there were Jews hiding.

What they would have noticed, and as an investigator, Vince said they would have noticed immediately, because you know, the door where the uh family was hiding was now a bookcase was in front of it.

Nobody would have known that that there was a door behind it unless you look down on the floor what was called uh a witness sign.

You know, a witness, it was like you saw this, it's a crescent shape on the floor that says that this bookcase opens and closes.

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: And they would have seen that right away.

So it's it's a fast, it's a story that keeps on.

Each time I think the story has been told, one more, one more thing, you know.

So that witness sign was just phenomenal.

And yeah, Vince went into much detail about it.

And that, you know, the capture itself is just horrible.

But reading, I'm working on another project about Otto Frank, and it takes me back there in those camps.

And he was a man, he identified more than anything in the world of being Papa Frank, being a father.

And that's the thing that kept him alive.

The very, very thing.

He was nearly near his death.

And he said to this young man with him when he went to Auschwitz, he says, Let's just talk about literature and music.

Uh not we no, not about food.

There was death and stench all around them.

He says, Talk, let's talk about what we what we love, you know, music.

And he says, and please, I need to be a father.

To someone, I need to be a father.

That's who I am.

Call me Papa Frank.

And so this young man called him Papa Frank forever.

And that's what he did.

Yeah.

It was really extraordinary story.

Amazing.

SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.

I'm curious for you, kind of your own personal life.

How did how did this relationship affect you and impact maybe where you went with your life as you grew older?

SPEAKER_01: So great, great question, Kevin.

You know, and usually one I haven't talked because I'm so used to talking about them.

But I after he passed, and Fritzi and I were still writing to each other and very close.

I was close to uh Buddy Elias, his nephew, this family.

My life, after, you know, I was in Southern California, I was a married woman.

My sons, Ethan and Jesse, were off in school, uh, grown, had went through divorce, bankruptcy.

I lost everything that I knew in my life hit the floor.

It was it was like I was, you know, almost 50 years old.

I had never really been out on my own.

And I thought this was the end of my life.

I didn't know how I was gonna cope with anything.

You know, it was just I was uh a babe in the woods, you know, and just terrified.

So a friend of mine wrote to me and said, she was in Monterey and said, come come to us from LA, my husband and I, and write, you know, do press releases, and uh we'll find you a place.

Don't worry, you're gonna be fine.

This was she was an angel.

She was a total angel.

And so it was the first time I really got in this funky old car and I took off.

I don't know how I did it.

And I heard this voice loud and clear in my soul that said, you know, you're all right.

You are fine, your children are fine, you know, they're off in school and in college, and you know, you're healthy, your animals are gonna be fine.

I had six animals to take care of.

But this voice said, But you're not l learning your lessons.

And so we've pulled the rug out from under you, and you're gonna have to start all over again.

And this is what this voice.

I have some tough, tough angels, Kevin.

You're not they're not messing with me, you know.

It's like there's no sugarcoating there.

They're just saying, get over it and get on.

Yes, I was so uh I'm not gonna say it was easy.

I sat on the studio floor, this little box after having this beautiful rustic home in the Hollywood Hills, with boxes all around me, my six animals.

I was very I didn't know if I wanted to go on living.

But the only thing that really kept me going, even though I knew my sons were fine, I had to feed my animals.

I mean, I love them more than anything.

So who was going to take care of them if I off myself?

So I went out and had every job in the world, which turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

I mean, it was really, but on top of that, while I'm sitting on the floor, I had this fax machine that was started pumping out just all these papers.

And what it said was a friend of mine who was in Hollywood said, Kara, I think I found a producer to wants to, uh, you know, a publisher who wants to write your story about Otto Frank.

And I went, What?

That was so I I are you what?

And there it was.

I was able to, you know, I didn't even want to write that because it was all about going back into my past, a past that was painful.

I didn't want to talk about the house I used to have, the marriage I used to have.

I didn't know if I wanted to.

So I turned to Fritzi and Buddy and I said, Is this, do you want me to do this?

Should I write about?

They said, Yes, we want people to know who Otto Frank was.

You need to write this story.

And I got in advance, that money saved me.

And that was Otto Frank.

It was like this, you know, he was right there writing a check for me.

And on top of that, uh another spooky thing that would happen while I was doing all this, the strangest thing kept happening.

The number eight kept popping up.

You know, if uh eight friends would show up to go to uh uh a concert on the eighth row with eight tickets, the number I'd go into the forest and there at the right at my feet there'd be a torn card with the number eight on it.

It was happening all the time.

And finally somebody called me and said, Kara, do you know what the number eight is in Italian?

It's auto.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_01: I know, and it's a sign of infinity and you know, abundance.

He's he was again from on high telling me you can't give up hope.

So I'm telling you, it was an extraordinary second half of my life.

That was, and that's how I met my my husband now, Peter.

But that took years.

I mean, it was I had to do a lot of work.

I had to grow up.

I'm still not grown up, Kevin.

I mean, I'm an older than God, but I still have not grown up.

SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll remain immature all my life, and maybe that's maybe maybe that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.

Oh my goodness.

So your your book or memoir is Tree of Hope.

Tree of Hope.

Talk about the title.

SPEAKER_01: Because when he, you know, told me even if the end of the world would be imminent, you still plant a tree today.

He was my tree of hope.

He gave me that hope.

He would and trees to me are everything hopeful and all of nature.

One of my other books is Strength from Nature, but he knew that.

He knew how much that would mean to me.

And he was that.

He was my tree of hope.

He would he would not let me give up hope.

And I know when I go through a, I have a a side of me that has a dark side, a hopelessness.

Oh, it's never gonna, you know, when I see with the tragedies that are happening in the world today, there I I tend to go to that place.

And yet I remember, you know, I would be calling up Otto and saying, please, please tell me again, when I read about what he went through and then losing his beautiful daughters, all of that, and yet he was able to give all of us young people, many of them, had riveting stories of hopelessness.

And he gave us all that.

And that was able to, you know, we were able to help him continuing, continue being the father that he was meant to be.

And he was our father figure.

I can't give up hope.

I I, you know, I have grandchildren that why I looked at these young people who have, I believe they signed on for this crazy world.

So I can't leave them or give up hope.

We're here to help each other and to teach each other.

We're all students, we're all teachers.

Everything we go through is something to help others.

It's how we learn, it's how we uplift each other.

I learn, I'm an absolute survivor junkie.

I mean, I mean, to me, your story, Kevin, is amazing.

I mean, I thrive in knowing people who are overcoming many obstacles in order to be who they are and enlighten people.

And that's what gives me hope.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love it so much.

I want to ask you about the book, writing the this book.

Right.

Was it difficult for you to go back and to be so open and to share this honestly, this deeply personal relationship with somebody to then put it out into the world?

And and kind of on top of that question is my second part is had you, besides for the letters back and forth, had you ever thought about being a writer in the first place?

SPEAKER_01: I loved writing.

I don't know if I thought about being a writer.

I think more than I anything, I wanted to be a performer, a dancer, an actor.

And my kids have continued that.

My grandchildren, you know, they're they have that gene.

But I basically, uh I I thought more of that, but I more than anything, I wanted to be a mother.

And I wrote one of the things that Otto said to me, and it affected me deeply, is uh he said that with tears in his eyes when he was telling me the first time he opened Anne's diary.

And he was so devastated because here he was the closest to her of all of them, and yet he didn't know this side of her.

And it just threw him, I didn't know my daughter.

And he said to me, Know your children, Gotta know your children.

And I I'm so grateful.

I didn't keep journals or diaries of myself.

I tried to, and it was just like, ugh.

But I wrote about them.

I wrote journals about my children, and writing was something that I love doing, and I've done it.

I was, you know, a commercial writer, I was a copywriter at marketing, advertising for years, you know, broadcast writing.

I love I'm a storyteller.

So I love writing people's stories and telling people's stories because everybody has a story.

But did I want to be see myself as a writer?

Uh no, I don't think so.

I think I just love writing.

Uh there wasn't, you know, it was sort of jack of all trades.

I loved doing it all.

I wanted to do it all in the arts.

I wasn't that disciplined to do one thing.

And I had to whittle down to what kind of a writer I am.

Since I started out is later is in doing commercial writing, I realized I'm not, you know, uh a Harper Lee, you know, who to me is the best.

I'm a conversational writer.

I write the way I talk.

And so no, I didn't I didn't see myself that way.

Writing was something that was easy for me.

I loved writing it.

I read, you know, people's letters.

I write, I read, you know, love stories, you know, people's vows.

I've done it for all my life, and it's just something that I enjoy immensely that just comes naturally to me.

But yeah, no, I I just think I never saw myself that way.

And I could never have imagined, yes, it was a very painful book.

It was like the fourth book.

Uh there were other books before that.

This was the last one.

It's my favorite because the last part of it are the lessons I learned from Otto Frank.

And I I feel those are the ones I love to talk about.

What he gave me and continues to give me in so many ways.

It was a hard book, and it was a hard book for me to read later on, even now, because it's almost embarrassing to see how absolutely how open I was.

But uh in a sense, it endeared us to each other because that we had a a love for each other.

We didn't get to, you know, I didn't get to visit him as much and and see him the way Father John and Ryan did, but I had a deep love for him and and his family, Buddy Elias, the nephew, and Fritzi was absolutely there for me in a very, very painful time.

She wrote to me like a grandmother and was there guiding me.

She was a very funny lady, but she was a very strong woman, and they adored each other.

But yeah, it was not an easy one.

And what what is only easy to talk about now is I feel like I'm a channel for him.

It's I don't want it to be the the Kara show.

It has nothing to do with me.

I want to be the voice for those people that have passed.

Anna and Margot, and especially Otto, whose voice is so strong, especially now with all the horror and the tragedy that is happening in the world.

I know that he would just be devastated with it and would be saying the same thing.

You cannot give up hope.

We must unite.

He was a man that believed in uniting the world.

All races, all religions, Israelis, Palestinians, he would wanted them all to be together.

And I I echo that.

We went, you know, we must not have enemies of each other.

We're here to love each other.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.

Such a beautiful story that you have.

And uh I I have one last question, but before I ask you that question, for somebody who's interested in your book and interested in everything that you do, because I would love for you even to share a little bit about what you do with writing.

Tell everybody where we where people can go to learn more about you and uh what you do.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you.

Yes, we certainly my books are on Amazon, Tree of Hope, and also uh Strength from Nature.

But you can go on my website, which is WordsfromCara, C-A-R-A.com, www.wordsfromcara.com.

And I'm writing right now with a person that you know very well who introduced us, Sally Lotz.

And she is an author and a speaker and a podcaster, and she and she coaches people to write their books.

She's a one and she's a longtime friend of mine, very dear woman.

And we we are trying something new because we're this is sort of our our wheelhouse, and we're doing 90-day turnaround books.

And so I interviewed them and we market them, and she finds a way to do that.

But basically, in 90 days, we you know, you can have your story.

And and you can find her also.

Uh hello at Sally Lotz, L O T Z dot com.

Uh, but you can find that also on my website.

You can contact Sally.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, amazing.

Well, I will be sure that all of that is in the show notes for anybody interested.

For easy access, I'll do all the links, all the details.

So amazing, so powerful.

My last question in for you is whether it's something you gain from auto, whether maybe it's something that you've gained from your own life's experience.

In the world today that we're going in and all these just crazy uncertain times, what is that last message you would like to leave the person listening to us today who's maybe worried, they're anxious, they're struggling just with the fear of the world today.

What would you leave them with?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's wonderful.

I I would leave them with what helps me, Kevin.

Mother Nature always helps me.

And it goes back to the tree.

No matter even if you believe, this is all gonna end.

You plant a metaphorical or a real tree, but you go out in nature.

And nature to me is is is the great healer.

To me, that is where God is.

So I would say find the hope there, find belief there.

Whatever you believe in, whomever you believe in, however you pray or wish or whatever it is, just go somewhere and breathe in nature.

And there you mustn't give up hope because we're here to help each other.

What a mantra I say all the time, my purpose is love and light.

It is to be love and light, to give love and light, to receive love and light, to communicate love and light.

When you see yourself that way, you are that way.

And whatever you're going through, the pain you're going through, the sorrow you're going through, we all go through it because we wouldn't be here otherwise.

We can help others find the blessings inside us in our lives, and they're there.

They are always there.

They're harder sometimes to dig, they're like gems, but they're there.

And so, yes, I continue helping others through through whatever you're going through, just like you are, Kevin.

And I'm grateful, very grateful to all those who are doing the very thing.

So I I just don't give up hope.

Plant a tree, don't give up hope.

SPEAKER_03: I love it so much.

Kara, thank you so much for for sharing your story, for for sharing the story of Anne Frank, of Otto Frank.

It's such a powerful message, and uh I just uh sincerely appreciate you uh sharing it with us today.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Kevin, and it's a pleasure meeting you.

Wonderful meeting you.

Thank you with all my heart.

And they can contact me anytime they want.

SPEAKER_03: Okay.

Yes, perfect, perfect.

And for you listening today, my hope as always is that you've heard something today that not only you enjoyed, but more so maybe has you thinking about life in a little bit different way.

Because that's what it's about here.

It's about inspiring you to look at the hard stuff, maybe from a different angle.

And hopefully making tomorrow even a little bit better than today.

Until next time, I'm Kevin Mole.

And this, of course, is another episode of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.