Source: BBC
April 23, 2008
A greetings card signed by the Jewish diarist Anne Frank has been found in an antiques shop near Amsterdam.
The card was sent in 1937, when Frank was eight, and was addressed to one of her best friends, Sanne Ledermann.
The Anne Frank museum has authenticated the card, which shows a clover-covered bell above a snowy field, and wishes "good luck for the New Year".
Frank, who wrote her diary while in hiding from the Nazis, died in Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Paul van den Heuvel, a school teacher, was looking through items in his father's antique shop in Naarden, near Amsterdam, when he came across the card.
"I just found it in a box, which probably came from an Amsterdam flea market," he told Dutch television.
The card had been sent from Aachen, in Germany, where Frank was visiting her grandmother.
A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank museum, Maatje Mostard, said she had seen another similar card, posted on the same day from the same town, and she was sure it was authentic.
"I don't know what he will do with it," she said. "We hope we can get it for our collection."
Frank, her family and four other Jewish friends hid from the Nazis in a small Amsterdam apartment, until their arrest in 1944.
They were sent to Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. Anne died in Belsen of typhus shortly before the end of the war.
