A Girl Who Perished:
                       Anne Frank

Anne Frank was one of more than one and a half million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust.

Born in Frankfurt in 1929, her parents fled with her to Holland when she was four-years-old. From July 1942, when she was thirteen, to August 1944, they hid in a secret annex in an old warehouse in Amsterdam. It was there that Anne wrote her diary.

In August, 1944 Anne Frank, then aged 15, and her family, were discovered by the Nazis. She was taken first to Westerbork camp, and then, a month later, transported to Auschwitz. In December, 1944 she was moved from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of Tuberculosis, in March 1945, only a month before the camp was liberated by the allies. She was sixteen.
 
 

July 15, 1944

Dear Kitty,

... That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams and

cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible

truth and be shattered.

It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals

because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.

Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still be-

lieve that people are really good at heart.

Yours,

Anne

Dear Diary,

We're here five days, but word of honor it seems like five years. I don't even know where to begin writing, because so many awful things have happened since I last wrote in you. First, the fence was finished and nobody can go out or come in... From today on, we're not in a ghetto but a ghetto camp, and on every house they have posted a notice which tells exactly what we're not allowed to do... Actually, everything is forbidden, but the most awful thing of all is that the punishment for everything is death. It doesn't actually say that this punishment also applies to children, but I think it does apply to us too.

Eva (age 13)

Building the Wall of the Warsaw Ghetto

Courtesy Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem
 

Life in the Ghetto

...We got used to standing in line at 7 o'clock in the morning, at 12 noon and again at 7 o'clock in the evening. We stood in a long queue with a plate in our hand, into which they ladled a little warmed-up water with a salty or a coffee flavor. Or else they gave us a few potatoes. We got used to sleeping without a bed, to saluting every uniform, not to walk on the sidewalks and then again to walk on the sidewalks. We got used to undeserved slaps, blows and executions. We got accustomed to seeing people die in their own excrement, to seeing piled-up coffins full of corpses, to seeing the sick amidst the dirt and filth and to seeing the helpless doctors. We got used to it that from time to time, one thousand unhappy souls would come here and that, from time to time, another thousand unhappy souls would go away...

Petr Fischl

(Born September 9, 1929

and perished in Auschwitz in 1944)

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