Sanne Ledermann

Susanne "Sanne" Ledermann (October 7, 1928 – November 19, 1943) was a German Jewish girl who was killed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Susanne is best known for her friendship with the famous diarist Anne Frank and her sister Margot Frank.

Sanne was born in Berlin, the younger of two daughters of Franz Ledermann, lawyer and musician, and Ilse Citroën-Ledermann, a pianist. In 1933, Adolf Hitler's Nazi party came to power. The Ledermanns, faced with the threat of death because they were Jews, emigrated to Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Sanne was admitted to a Montessori School, where she befriended Anne Frank and Hanneli Goslar. In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and Sanne had to move to a Jewish school. Hanneli and Anne moved to a different Jewish school. However, Sanne still kept good contacts with both Anne and Hanneli, and was a member of the ping pong club Little Dipper Minus Two (they had thought the little dipper had five stars for the five girls who were in the club, while there were actually seven stars, thus they called it "Little Dipper Minus Two"), which was formed by her friends. In July 1942, Anne and her family (Margot, Otto, and Edith, along with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer) went into hiding, although Sanne didn't know about this.

On June 20, 1943, the Ledermanns were arrested by the Nazis. They were transported to the Westerbork transit camp, and on November 16th were deported to the Auschwitz death camp. Immediately upon their arrival, Sanne and her parents were murdered in the gas chambers of the camp.

Sanne's sister, Barbara, was able to escape the Nazis through her contacts with the Dutch underground. Barbara emigrated to the United States and later married the Nobel prize winning biochemist Martin Rodbell.