I am an avid reader and have been since I retired from teaching. You could say I was always so busy before and could not fit interesting reading into my often hectic life.  I have read many different types of books, but I decided it was time to re-visit a book I read as a ninth grade student. I must say after re-reading “Anne Frank-the Diary of a Young Girl,” I didn’t fully grasp as a ninth grader what the world has been denied: a wonderfully articulate young girl who grew into womanhood behind an annex bookcase, while trying to fight against the fears and pain of the Holocaust. Even though my family life was difficult after my mother passed, I did not fear for my life, did not believe that I could die if someone turned my family into the Gestapo, or that I would not have a future as an adult.  Through all her struggles, Anne remained comforted by the thought that people were still good, despite all the wrongs they committed.

When I traveled to Amsterdam in the spring of 2016, I visited Anne’s hiding place and witnessed, first hand, how difficult her time in the annex must have been.  As I climbed the six-inch stairs up into the small living area that had been shared by eight people, I soon felt claustrophobic and needed fresh air to clean out my lungs.  I could almost hear Otto and Edith Frank and Hermann and Auguste van Pels arguing about who got to eat and when, how to maintain a strict silent time so as to not be discovered by anyone, who could use the incredibly small bathroom, and who slept where.  Although Anne did not, at first, get along with her sister, Margot, the tenderness of a close relationship developed over the two and a half years they were in hiding.  The love that developed between Anne and Peter van Pels as they looked out of the attic loft window at star lit skies reminded me of some of my first boyfriends when I went to college. Anne’s love-hate relationship with her parents was much like my relationship with my father, albeit in slightly different situations.  The other person hidden in the annex was a dentist by the name of Albert Dussel, a bitter, arrogant, abusive man who tormented Anne and everyone else for the entire time they were in hiding.

There is a small area as you leave the annex where Anne’s actual diary is encased in a vacuum-sealed showcase.  Tears came to my eyes as I saw three teenage girls press their hands to the case and say, “She was our age. How did she survive living so close together in an area the size of our own living rooms at home?” The horror of Anne’s death hit them as they turned around to see the only surviving photograph of Anne and Margot at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died from typhus in 1945, a month before the camp was liberated by the Allies. I could not look at the rest of the photographs because I was engulfed in my own pain. I fled outside to breathe in the fresh air and to see the beautiful wispy white clouds in a blue sky, things that Anne was denied as she hid from the Germans and that we take for granted.

Otto Frank was the sole survivor of the secret annex.  He published Anne’s diary in 1963 and died in 1980 in Birsfelden, Switzerland. People could not successfully hide from the Germans without help, and the Franks were indebted to Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Elisabet Voskuijl for their kindness, love, and courage in the face of the Nazis, whose only goal was to totally annihilate the Jewish race.

In our chaotic and brutal world today, I often remember Anne’s courage and faith in the goodness of man. As I think of the violence, anger, hatred, and hostile language that is taking place in our country, I worry that we are descending into the world of tyrants and monsters as we saw in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power. Are we really willing to give up our democracy for something akin to that? I wonder if any of us have the courage to withstand what the Jewish race has withstood for centuries.  Realizing that my faith in God has, at times, faltered, makes me believe that Anne’s hope and faith is what keeps us from totally destroying ourselves and this planet.  As much as she and I believe that God will help us be better people, we also want a brighter future for generations to come.  She wanted to matter as do I; she wanted to become a writer as I am. She will be forever remembered for her words, “I still believe in the goodness of man.”  The world is indebted to her for those words, and we all need to keep their spirit in our hearts.  Otherwise, why are we here?

Anna Hartt