Buddy Elias, the cousin of Anne Frank who committed his life to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, has died in Basel, Switzerland, at age 89.
A spokesman for the Anne Frank Fonds said today Elias died peacefully at home Monday, surrounded by his family.
The organization said in a statement that Elias was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1925, where he spent his early childhood years with his cousin Anne.
Anne Frank became famous for a diary she kept while her family went into hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam when she was 13. The Jewish teenager died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
As president of the Anne Frank Fonds, Elias oversaw the continuing publication of Frank's diary and helped preserve her legacy.
