Victor Kugler 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.
Kugler was born in Hohenelbe in the German-speaking part of Königgrätz region, north-eastern Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic, to Emma Kugler. 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, Kugler 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, lived in Hilversum during the war, a distance of about 26 kilometres from Amsterdam.