The Diary of a Young Girl (30 page)

What do we care about our two mothers? Oh, if only he’d say something.

Father always says I’m conceited, but I’m not, I’m merely vain! I haven’t had many people tell me I was pretty, except for a boy at school who said I looked so cute when I smiled. Yesterday Peter paid me a true compliment, and just for fun I’ll give you a rough idea of our conversation.

Peter often says, “Smile!” I thought it was strange, so yesterday I asked him, “Why do you always want me to smile?”

“Because you get dimples in your cheeks. How do you do that?”

“I was born with them. There’s also one in my chin. It’s the only mark of beauty I possess.”

“No, no, that’s not true!”

“Yes it is. I know I’m not beautiful. I never have been and I never will be!”

“I don’t agree. I think you’re pretty.”

“I am not.”

“I say you are, and you’ll have to take my word for it!”

So of course I then said the same about him.

Yours, Anne M. Frank

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
29, 1944

Dearest Kitty
,

Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course, everyone pounced on my diary.
Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annex. The title alone would make people think it was a detective story.

Seriously, though, ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding. Although I tell you a great deal about our lives, you still know very little about us. How frightened the women are during air raids; last Sunday, for instance, when 350 British planes dropped 550 tons of bombs on IJmuiden, so that the houses trembled like blades of grass in the wind. Or how many epidemics are raging here.

You know nothing of these matters, and it would take me all day to describe everything down to the last detail. People have to stand in line to buy vegetables and all kinds of goods; doctors can’t visit their patients, since their cars and bikes are stolen the moment they turn their backs; burglaries and thefts are so common that you ask yourself what’s suddenly gotten into the Dutch to make them so light-fingered. Little children, eight- and eleven-year-olds, smash the windows of people’s homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. People don’t dare leave the house for even five minutes, since they’re liable to come back and find all their belongings gone. Every day the newspapers are filled with reward notices for the return of stolen typewriters, Persian rugs, electric clocks, fabrics, etc. The electric clocks on street corners are dismantled, public phones are stripped down to the last wire.

Morale among the Dutch can’t be good. Everyone’s hungry; except for the ersatz coffee, a week’s food ration doesn’t last two days. The invasion’s long in coming, the men are being shipped off to Germany, the children are sick or undernourished, everyone’s wearing worn-out
clothes and run-down shoes. A new sole costs 7.50 guilders on the black market. Besides, few shoemakers will do repairs, or if they do, you have to wait four months for your shoes, which might very well have disappeared in the meantime.

One good thing has come out of this: as the food gets worse and the decrees more severe, the acts of sabotage against the authorities are increasing. The ration board, the police, the officials—they’re all either helping their fellow citizens or denouncing them and sending them off to prison. Fortunately, only a small percentage of Dutch people are on the wrong side.

Yours, Anne

F
RIDAY
, M
ARCH
31, 1944

Dearest Kitty
,

Just imagine, it’s still fairly cold, and yet most people have been without coal for nearly a month. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? There’s a general mood of optimism about the Russian front, because that’s going great guns! I don’t often write about the political situation, but I must tell you where the Russians are at the moment. They’ve reached the Polish border and the Prut River in Romania. They’re close to Odessa, and they’ve surrounded Ternopol. Every night we’re expecting an extra communiqué from Stalin.

They’re firing off so many salutes in Moscow, the city must be rumbling and shaking all day long. Whether they like to pretend the fighting’s nearby or they simply don’t have any other way to express their joy, I don’t know!

Hungary has been occupied by German troops. There are still a million Jews living there; they too are doomed.

Nothing special is happening here. Today is Mr. van Daan’s birthday. He received two packets of tobacco, one serving of coffee, which his wife had managed to save, lemon punch from Mr. Kugler, sardines from Miep, eau de cologne from us, lilacs, tulips and, last but not least, a cake with raspberry filling, slightly gluey because of the poor quality of the flour and the lack of butter, but delicious anyway.

All that talk about Peter and me has died down a bit. He’s coming to pick me up tonight. Pretty nice of him, don’t you think, since he hates doing it! We’re very good friends. We spend a lot of time together and talk about every imaginable subject. It’s so nice not having to hold back when we come to a delicate topic, the way I would with other boys. For example, we were talking about blood and somehow the conversation turned to menstruation, etc. He thinks we women are quite tough to be able to withstand the loss of blood, and that I am too. I wonder why?

My life here has gotten better, much better. God has not forsaken me, and He never will.

Yours, Anne M. Frank

S
ATURDAY
, A
PRIL
1, 1944

My dearest Kitty
,

And yet everything is still so difficult. You do know what I mean, don’t you? I long so much for him to kiss me, but that kiss is taking its own sweet time. Does he still think of me as a friend? Don’t I mean anything more?

You and I both know that I’m strong, that I can carry most burdens alone. I’ve never been used to sharing my worries with anyone, and I’ve never clung to a mother, but I’d love to lay my head on his shoulder and just sit there quietly.

I can’t, I simply can’t forget that dream of Peter’s cheek, when everything was so good! Does he have the same longing? Is he just too shy to say he loves me? Why does he want me near him so much? Oh, why doesn’t he say something?

I’ve got to stop, I’ve got to be calm. I’ll try to be strong again, and if I’m patient, the rest will follow. But—and this is the worst part—I seem to be chasing him. I’m always the one who has to go upstairs;
he
never comes to
me
. But that’s because of the rooms, and he understands why I object. Oh, I’m sure he understands more than I think.

Yours, Anne M. Frank

M
ONDAY
, A
PRIL
3, 1944

My dearest Kitty
,

Contrary to my usual practice, I’m going to write you a detailed description of the food situation, since it’s become a matter of some difficulty and importance, not only here in the Annex, but in all of Holland, all of Europe and even beyond.

In the twenty-one months we’ve lived here, we’ve been through a good many “food cycles”—you’ll understand what that means in a moment. A “food cycle” is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive—and—mashed potato casserole. Then it was spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc., etc.

It’s not much fun when you have to eat, say, sauerkraut every day for lunch and dinner, but when you’re hungry enough, you do a lot of things. Now, however,
we’re going through the most delightful period so far, because there are no vegetables at all.

Our weekly lunch menu consists of brown beans, split-pea soup, potatoes with dumplings, potato kugel and, by the grace of God, turnip greens or rotten carrots, and then it’s back to brown beans. Because of the bread shortage, we eat potatoes at every meal, starting with breakfast, but then we fry them a little. To make soup we use brown beans, navy beans, potatoes, packages of vegetable soup, packages of chicken soup and packages of bean soup. There are brown beans in everything, including the bread. For dinner we always have potatoes with imitation gravy and—thank goodness we’ve still got it—beet salad. I must tell you about the dumplings. We make them with government-issue flour, water and yeast. They’re so gluey and tough that it feels as if you have rocks in your stomach, but oh well!

The high point is our weekly slice of liverwurst, and the jam on our unbuttered bread. But we’re still alive, and much of the time it still tastes good too!

Yours, Anne M. Frank

W
EDNESDAY
, A
PRIL
5, 1944

My dearest Kitty
,

For a long time now I didn’t know why I was bothering to do any schoolwork. The end of the war still seemed so far away, so unreal, like a fairy tale. If the war isn’t over by September, I won’t go back to school, since I don’t want to be two years behind.

Peter filled my days, nothing but Peter, dreams and thoughts until Saturday night, when I felt so utterly miserable; oh, it was awful. I held back my tears when I was with Peter, laughed uproariously with the van Daans as
we drank lemon punch and was cheerful and excited, but the minute I was alone I knew I was going to cry my eyes out. I slid to the floor in my nightgown and began by saying my prayers, very fervently. Then I drew my knees to my chest, lay my head on my arms and cried, all huddled up on the bare floor. A loud sob brought me back down to earth, and I choked back my tears, since I didn’t want anyone next door to hear me. Then I tried to pull myself together, saying over and over, “I must, I must, I must …” Stiff from sitting in such an unusual position, I fell back against the side of the bed and kept up my struggle until just before ten-thirty, when I climbed back into bed. It was over!

And now it’s really over. I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I
know
I can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but … it remains to be seen whether I really have talent.

“Eva’s Dream” is my best fairy tale, and the odd thing is that I don’t have the faintest idea where it came from. Parts of “Cady’s Life” are also good, but as a whole it’s nothing special. I’m my best and harshest critic. I know what’s good and what isn’t. Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don’t want to
have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!

When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies.

I haven’t worked on “Cady’s Life” for ages. In my mind I’ve worked out exactly what happens next, but the story doesn’t seem to be coming along very well. I might never finish it, and it’ll wind up in the wastepaper basket or the stove. That’s a horrible thought, but then I say to myself, “At the age of fourteen and with so little experience, you can’t write about philosophy.”

So onward and upward, with renewed spirits. It’ll all work out, because I’m determined to write!

Yours, Anne M. Frank

T
HURSDAY
, A
PRIL
6, 1944

Dearest Kitty
,

You asked me what my hobbies and interests are and I’d like to answer, but I’d better warn you, I have lots of them, so don’t be surprised.

First of all: writing, but I don’t really think of that as a hobby.

Number two: genealogical charts. I’m looking in every newspaper, book and document I can find for the family trees of the French, German, Spanish, English,
Austrian, Russian, Norwegian and Dutch royal families. I’ve made great progress with many of them, because for a long time I’ve been taking notes while reading biographies or history books. I even copy out many of the passages on history.

So my third hobby is history, and Father’s already bought me numerous books. I can hardly wait for the day when I’ll be able to go to the public library and ferret out the information I need.

Number four is Greek and Roman mythology. I have various books on this subject too. I can name the nine Muses and the seven loves of Zeus. I have the wives of Hercules, etc., etc., down pat.

My other hobbies are movie stars and family photographs. I’m crazy about reading and books. I adore the history of the arts, especially when it concerns writers, poets and painters; musicians may come later. I loathe algebra, geometry and arithmetic. I enjoy all my other school subjects, but history’s my favorite!

Yours, Anne M. Frank

T
UESDAY
, A
PRIL
11, 1944

My dearest Kitty
,

My head’s in a whirl, I really don’t know where to begin. Thursday (the last time I wrote you) everything was as usual. Friday afternoon (Good Friday) we played Monopoly; Saturday afternoon too. The days passed very quickly. Around two o’clock on Saturday, heavy firing began—machine guns, according to the men. For the rest, everything was quiet.