Story of Anne Frank friends to be sold

The international rights to a book telling the stories of six classmates of Anne Frank, who unlike her survived the Holocaust, went up for sale Thursday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

"It's a very simple and dignified book, which is receiving strong interest," Robert Walsh, the literary agent who holds the rights, told AFP.

Of the 21 children in Anne Frank's class at the Jewish school she attended in Amsterdam, 11 survived World War II and six are still alive today.

One of them, Theo Coster, hid during the war and moved to Tel Aviv where he became an inventor of games and gadgets. Now 82, he collected the memories of the others, from as far afield as Brazil.

"They all remember Anne Frank," who died in 1945 at the age of 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany and whose diary has become one of the most read books in the world.

The new book tells of their life in hiding or their deportation but does not reveal any new details of Frank's life, Walsh said.

He would not reveal the asking price for the rights, speaking only of a "good amount."

Deals have already been sealed in France, Italy and Portugal and negotiations are underway for an English translation.