Victor Kugler

Victor Kugler
Victor Kugler with the statue of Anne Frank in 1975
Born	(1900-06-05)June 5, 1900 Hohenelbe, Austria-Hungary (now, Vrchlabí, Czech Republic)
Died	December 16, 1981 (aged 81) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Austrian, at birth; then, Dutch; later, Canadian
Other names	Mr Kraler
Occupation	Worker at Opekta

Victor Kugler (5 June 1900, Hohenelbe/Vrchlabí – 14 December 1981, Toronto) was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he was referred to under the name Mr. Kraler.

Born in Hohenelbe (now Vrchlabí) in the German-speaking part of Köninggrätz region (Královéhradecký kraj/Hradec Králové Region), north-eastern Bohemia, Austria-Hungary to Emma Kugler. Now in the Czech Republic), he joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy during the First World War once his education was completed, but was discharged in 1918 after being wounded. He moved to Germany and worked as an electrician, then in 1920 moved to Utrecht, the Netherlands to work for a company selling pectin. He joined the Amsterdam branch of Opekta as Otto Frank's deputy in 1924. He became a Dutch citizen in May 1938. In 1940 this allowed him to prevent the Nazi confiscation of Opekta and he accepted the directorship of the business, renamed Gies and Co, from Otto Frank. He and his wife Laura Maria Buntenbach-Kugler (10 May 1895 - 6 December 1952) lived in Hilversum during the war, a distance of about sixteen miles from Amsterdam.

From July 1942 to August 1944 he aided his colleagues Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl in the concealment of eight people, including Anne Frank, in a sealed-off annexe in their office premises on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht. He was arrested by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, by Karl Silberbauer.