PR.com (Allison Kugel): Being that your mother and Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, were brother and sister and you and Anne first cousins, I imagine you spent quite a bit of your early childhood together. Can you tell me what you remember about Anne Frank’s personality, her sense of humor, and things she enjoyed as a young girl?

Buddy Elias: Anne explains her character best in her Diary, but my memories of her are all positive, as we were very fond of each other. Margot, her sister, was more my age. Anne was my playmate whenever we were together. Margot was a reader, and not so playful as Anne. Anne and I were two really wild kids. She always knew what to play, and getting dressed up and playing actors was one of her favorite games. I had a puppet theatre and the last time we were together I had a grandmother puppet, a crocodile [puppet] and a Jack in the Box. I handled the puppets. The crocodile wanted to eat grandmother, but Jack came up and killed the crocodile. Anne loved that! Then she told me to put on a dress of our real grandmother, Otto's and my mother's mother, and a hat and her high heeled shoes and imitate her, which I did. Anne had a wonderful laugh. She was a very happy and playful girl. She could get angry too, of course. Reasons every child gets angry; not getting what she would like. With her it was always fun. That was our last meeting before the war. It must have been 1938.

PR.com: Why did Anne call you "Bernd" as opposed to Bernhard or Buddy as most people called you?

Buddy Elias: That I cannot tell you. I only know that she didn’t like Buddy, the name my brother gave me. Bernd was probably a short version of Bernhard.

PR.com: Do you remember what kind of bond Anne Frank shared with her father, Otto Frank, and what type of relationship she shared with your mother who was her aunt?

Buddy Elias: Anne was Otto's child, while Margot took more to her mother. Anne was also very fond of my mother, her aunt.

PR.com: Before the war, what kind of work did your parents do and what kind of work did Otto Frank do?

Buddy Elias: My father became representative of a German firm in Switzerland before Hitler came to power. He moved in 1929, and my mother and me followed in 1931. That saved us. My father was a merchant, but worked also as a banker in Otto Frank’s father’s bank while he was still in Germany. Otto worked also at the bank of his father, but studied some time in Heidelberg, where he met Nathan Strauss of the famous American Strauss family [who owns] Macy’s. They became friends and Otto spent some time in New York working at Macy’s. When Otto had to leave Germany due to Hitler, my father arranged for him to become the representative in Holland of the same firm my father worked for, called Opekta.

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