I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the "Secret Annex" are humorous, there's a lot in my diary that speaks, but—whether I have real talent remains to be seen.
[April 5, 1944]
The Diary of Anne Frank, posthumously published in 1947 and eventually translated into almost 70 languages, is one of the most widely read works of non-fiction in the world. For many, especially younger readers, Anne's diary is their first encounter with the history of Nazi Germany's attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.
Anne's legacy, however, extends beyond her diary. Between the ages of 13 and 15, Anne wrote short stories, fairy tales, essays, and the beginnings of a novel. Five notebooks and more than 300 loose pages, meticulously handwritten during her two years in hiding, survived the war. They reveal a young woman who had great ambition to be a writer and was exploring her craft. Her works combine adolescent imagination and playfulness with mature insight and self-awareness.
But it's the same with all my friends, just fun and joking, nothing more. I can never bring myself to talk of anything outside the common round....
Hence, this diary.... I want this diary itself to be my friend.
[June 20, 1942] Anne received her first diary on her 13th birthday, June 12, 1942.
On Friday, June 12th, I woke up at six o'clock, and no wonder; it was my birthday.... Soon after seven I went to Mummy and Daddy and then to the sitting room to undo my presents. The first to greet me was you, possibly the nicest of all.
[June 14, 1942] I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.
[June 12, 1942] As we are Jewish we emigrated to Holland in 1933, where my father was appointed Managing Director of the Netherlands Opekta Co., which manufactures jam.
[June 20, 1942] Anne kept a photo album. Most of the pictures in it were taken by Otto Frank, who often photographed his two daughters. The last photographs of Anne date from the early summer of 1942, shortly before she went into hiding.
My father, the dearest darling of a father I have ever seen, was thirty-six when he married my mother who was then twenty-five. My sister Margot, was born in 1926 in Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany. I followed on June 12, 1929.
[June 20, 1942] The 7 or 12 beautiful features (not mine mind you!) should come here, then I can fill in which ones I have, and which ones I don't!
28 Sept. 1942 (drawn up by myself.)
- blue eyes, black hair (no.)
- dimples in cheeks (yes.)
- dimple in chin (yes.)
- widow's peak (no.)
- white skin (yes.)
- straight teeth (no.)
- small mouth (no.)
- curly eyelashes (no.)
- straight nose (yes.) {at least so far}
- nice clothes (sometimes.) {not nearly enough in my opinion}
- nice fingernails (sometimes.)
- intelligent (sometimes.)
[September 28, 1942] I console myself with the thought that on the photograph above taken in 1939 Margot was not all that well-developed either. She was 13 at the time, the same age I am now or even a little older. So she's got no cause to look down on me.
[September 28, 1942] I expect you will be rather surprised at the fact that I should talk about boy friends at my age. Alas, one simply can't seem to avoid it at our school. As soon as a boy asks if he may bicycle home with me and we get into conversation, nine out of ten times I can be sure that he will fall head over heels in love immediately and simply won't allow me out of his sight. After a while it cools down of course, especially as I take little notice of ardent looks and pedal blithely on.
[June 20, 1942] Granny was supposed to be in the photograph. Margot pressed down the shutter and when it was developed we saw that Granny had disappeared. 
Anti-Jewish decrees followed each other in quick succession. Jews must wear a yellow star, Jews must hand in their bicycles, Jews are banned from trams and are forbidden to drive, Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o'clock.... Jews must be indoors by eight o'clock.... Jews are forbidden to visit theaters.... Jews may not visit Christians. Jews must go to Jewish schools, and many more restrictions of a similar kind.
So we could not do this and were forbidden to do that. But life went on in spite of it all.
[June 20, 1942] ...a call-up; everyone knows what that means. I picture concentration camps and lonely cells.... Margot is sixteen; would they really take girls of that age away alone? But thank goodness she won't go, Mummy said so herself; that must be what Daddy meant when he talked about us going into hiding.
Into hiding—where would we go, in a town or the country, in a house or a cottage, when, how, where....?
[July 8, 1942] Margot and I began to pack some of our most vital belongings into a school satchel, the first thing in was this diary, then hair curlers, handkerchiefs, schoolbooks, a comb, old letters, I put in the craziest things with the idea that we were going into hiding, but I'm not sorry, memories mean more to me than dresses.
[July 8, 1942] Bookcase covering the entrance to the hiding place that Anne shared with her family and four others for just over two years. The "Secret Annex" had been prepared by Otto Frank on two hidden floors in the rear of the building at 263 Prinsengracht, which housed the business he owned before the Germans forced him to relinquish it. Four of Otto Frank's employees secretly provided assistance to the inhabitants of the annex.
I expect you will be interested to hear what it feels like to hide; well, all I can say is that I don't know myself yet. I don't think I shall ever feel really at home in this house but that does not mean that I loathe it here, it is more like being on vacation in a very peculiar boardinghouse. Rather a mad way of looking at being in hiding perhaps but that is how it strikes me.
[July 11, 1942]
Our little room looked very bare at first with nothing on the walls; but thanks to Daddy who had brought my film-star collection and picture postcards on beforehand, and with the aid of paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into one gigantic picture. This makes it look much more cheerful....
[July 11, 1942]
I started with Margot's photograph and finish with my own. This is January 1942. This photograph is horrible, and I look absolutely nothing like it.
[June 19, 1942]
On 11 May 1939 I got this marvelous letter from Daddy, it will be a support to me all my life, unless like Margot I leave it lying about somewhere, just as Margot has done at home.
[September 28, 1942]
It's not really all that bad here, for we can cook for ourselves, and downstairs in Daddy's office we can listen to the radio.... Mr. Kleiman and Miep and also Bep Voskuyl have helped us so much.... We have things to read as well and we are going to buy all sorts of games.
Of course we are not allowed to look out of the window at all or to go outside. Also we have to do everything softly in case they hear us below.
[July 8, 1942]
Things are getting more serious, but there's still a smile left over from the funny bits.
Oh, what a joke.
Whatever next?
Nice one, as well.
That's a funny story.
Hello. "Yes, I'm fine!" (smiling politely.)
[July 8, 1942]
[illegible]
That's how I look in a pram
Gorgeous as well, isn't it? Anne.
18 October 1942 Sunday
I must have been watching the clown here.
Anne
[October 18, 1942]
This is a photograph of me as I wish I looked all the time. Then I might still have a chance of getting to Holywood [Anne's spelling]. But at present, I'm afraid, I usually look quite different.
[October 10, 1942]
The fact that we can never go outside bothers me more than I can say, and then I'm really afraid that we'll be discovered and shot, not a very nice prospect, needless to say.
[July 11, 1942] 
"Longing for Saturdays"
I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn!
[April 5, 1944]
Will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, for I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals, and my fantasies.
[April 5, 1944]
I have an odd way of sometimes, as it were, being able to see myself through someone else's eyes. Then I view the affairs of a certain "Anne" at my ease, and browse through the pages of her life as if she were a stranger.
[January 12, 1944]
So far I have put almost nothing in my diary other than thoughts and have never got round to nice stories I might read out loud one day. But from now on I shan't be so sentimental or a bit less and keep closer to reality.
[August 1, 1942]
I want to try and finish the story about Ellen, the fairy. I can give it to Daddy for fun on his birthday, together with all author's rights.
[May 6, 1944]
We always long for Saturdays when our books come. Just like little children receiving a present.
Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.
[July 11, 1943]
Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong, I have my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite independent of anyone.
[March 17, 1944] "Eva's Dream"
In hiding, Anne wrote short stories, fairy tales, and essays. In her diary, she reflected on her "pen children," as she called her writings. On September 2, 1943, she began to meticulously copy them into a notebook and added a table of contents so that it would resemble a published book. She gave it the title Stories and Events from the Annex. Occasionally she read a story to the inhabitants of the annex, and she wrote about her intention to send one of her fairy tales to a Dutch magazine. Increasingly, she expressed her desire to be an author or journalist.
Anne considered "Eva's Dream" her best fairy tale.
Dear Kitty,
An interruption in my sketches of life in the "Secret Annex." A few weeks ago I started to write a story, something that was completely made up and that gave me such pleasure that my pen-children are now piling up.
[August 7, 1943]
Eva's Dream
Eva found herself at the entrance to a large park. She was peering uncertainly through the gate, not quite daring to go inside.
Just as she was about to turn away, a tiny little woman with wings came up to her and said:
"Don't be afraid to go in, Eva. Or don't you know the way?"
"No, I don't," Eva shyly confessed.
"Well, then. Let me show you." And the plucky little elf took Eva's hand.... "Let's begin:
"First, there's the rose-the queen of the flowers; she is so beautiful and her fragrance is so intoxicating that it goes to everyone's head, most of all her own...."
...As she spoke, the elf knelt beside a bluebell, which was gently swaying back and forth in the grass to the rhythm of the wind.
"This bluebell is simple and kind. It brings joy to the world. It chimes for flowers, just as church bells chime for people. It helps lots of flowers and is a comfort to them. The bluebell is never lonely; there's music in its heart. It's a much happier creature than the rose. The bluebell isn't interested in the praise of others. The rose lives and thrives on admiration. When that's missing, the rose has nothing to make her happy. Her outward appearance is for other people, but her heart is empty and therefore cheerless."
[Excerpt from "Eva's Dream," Stories and Events from the Annex] "Dear Kitty"
On March 28, 1944, a radio broadcast from the Dutch government-in-exile in London urged the Dutch people to keep diaries, letters, and other items that would document life under German occupation.
"History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone. If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we really need are ordinary documents—a diary, letters from a worker in Germany, a collection of sermons given by a parson or priest. Not until we succeed in bringing together vast quantities of this simple, everyday material will the picture of our struggle for freedom be painted in its full depth and glory."
Prompted by this announcement, Anne began to edit her diary, hoping to publish it after the war under the title The Secret Annex. From May 20 until her arrest on August 4, 1944, she transferred nearly two-thirds of her diary from her original notebooks to loose pages, making various revisions in the process.
Anne rearranged or combined entries, shortened or expanded them, and invented pen names for the inhabitants of the Annex. Interestingly, in the edited version she addressed every entry to her invented friend "Kitty," thus turning her diary into an imagined dialogue. While many of her edited pages are similar to her original entries, at times Anne inserted new perspectives or added new passages.
It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I-nor for that matter anyone else-will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.
There is a saying that "paper is more patient than man."
[June 20, 1942]
Dear Kitty,
Bolkestejn, a Cabinet Minister, was speaking in the Dutch News from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course they all made a rush at my diary immediately.
Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annex." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story. But, seriously, it would be quite funny 10 years after the war if we Jews were to tell how we lived and what we ate and talked about here. Although I tell you a lot, still, even so, you only know very little of our lives.
[March 29, 1944] Anne first wrote the following passage on December 24, 1943. She probably edited it in the early summer of 1944.
Her original version read:
Cycling again, dancing, flirting and what-have-you, how I would love that; if only I were free again! Sometimes I even think, will anybody understand me, will anybody overlook my ingratitude, overlook Jew or non-Jew, and just see the young girl in me who is badly in need of some rollicking fun? The edited version reads:
Cycling, dancing, whistling, looking out at the world, feeling young, to know that I'm free—that's what I long for; still I mustn't show it, because I sometimes think if all 8 of us began to pity ourselves, or went about with discontented faces, where would it lead us? 
On April 17, 1944, Anne began writing in what turned out to be her final diary notebook. On the first page she wrote about herself: "The owner's maxim: Zest is what man needs!" A few months later, she and the other inhabitants of the annex celebrated the Allied invasion of France, which took place on June 6, 1944. They were certain the war would soon be over.
On August 4, 1944, Anne, her family, and the others in hiding were arrested by German and Dutch police officials. Her last entry was written on August 1, 1944.
"For in its innermost depths, childhood is lonelier than old age." I read this saying in some book and I've always remembered it, and found it to be true. Is it true then that grownups have a more difficult time here than we do? No. I know it isn't. Older people have formed their opinions about everything and don't waver before they act. It's twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and in God.
Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn't realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually, until, after a long time, we think we've found a solution, but the solution doesn't seem able to resist the weapons which reduce it to nothing again. 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 believe that people are really good at heart.
I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death, I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.
yours, Anne M. Frank.
[July 15, 1944]
On August 8, 1944, Anne and her family were sent to the Westerbork transit camp in the northern part of the Netherlands. On September 3, 1944, they were deported on the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Two months later, Anne and Margot were taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
The world will still keep on turning without me; what is going to happen, will happen, and anyway it's no good trying to resist.
I trust to luck, but should I be saved, and spared from destruction, then it would be terrible if my diaries and my tales were lost.
[February 3, 1944] 
In hiding, Anne wrote short stories, fairy tales, and essays. On September 2, 1943, she began to meticulously copy them into a notebook and added a table of contents so that it would resemble a published book. She gave it the title Stories and Events from the Annex.
Anne's essay "Give!" may have been drafted earlier, but she transferred it to her Stories and Events from the Annex on March 26, 1944.
GIVE!
Do any of those people in their warm and cozy living rooms have any idea what kind of life a beggar leads?
Do any of those "good" and "kind" people ever wonder about the lives of so many of the children and adults around them? Granted, everyone has given a coin to a beggar at some time or another, though they usually just shove it into his hand and slam the door. And in most cases the generous donors think it's disgusting to touch that hand! Am I right or not? Then, afterwards, people are amazed that beggars are so shameless! Wouldn't you be shameless too if you were treated more like a dog than a human being?
It's terrible, really terrible, that people treat each other this way in a country like Holland, which claims to have such a good social system and so many decent, upstanding citizens. In the eyes of most of the well-to-do, a beggar is an inferior being, somebody who's scruffy and unwashed, pushy and rude. But have they ever asked themselves how beggars got to be that way?
You should try comparing one of those beggar children with your own children! What's the difference? Yours are pretty and neat, the others are ugly and ragged! Is that all? Yes, that's all, that's the only difference. If you dressed one of those urchins in nice clothes and taught him good manners, there wouldn't be a whit of difference!
Everyone is born equal; we all come into the world helpless and innocent. We all breathe the same air, and many of us believe in the same God. And yet...and yet, to many people this one small difference is a huge one! It's huge because many people have never realized what the difference is, for if they had they would have discovered long ago that there's actually no difference at all!
Everyone is born equal; we will all die and shed our earthly glory. Riches, power and fame last for only a few short years. Why do we cling so desperately to these fleeting things? Why can't people who have money more than enough for their own needs give the rest to their fellow human beings? Why should anyone have to have such a hard life for those few short years on earth?
But above all, a gift should never be flung in anyone's face— - every person has a right to kindness. Why should you be nicer to a rich lady than to a poor one? Has anyone ever studied the difference in their characters?
Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness. If we were to start by adding to that goodness instead of stifling it, by giving poor people the feeling that they too are human beings, we wouldn't necessarily have to give money or material things, since not everyone has them to give.
Everything starts in small ways, so in this case you can begin in small ways too. On streetcars, for example, don't just offer your seat to rich mothers, think of the poor ones too. And say "excuse me" when you step on a poor person's toe, just as you say it to a rich one.
It takes so little effort, yet it means so much. Why shouldn't you show a little kindness to those poor urchins who are already so deprived?
We all know that "example is better than precept." So set a good example, and it won't take long for others to follow. More and more people will become kind and generous, until finally no one will ever again look down on those without money.
Oh, if only we were already that far! If only Holland, then Europe, and finally the whole world realized how unfair it was being, if only the time would come when people treated each other with genuine good will, in the realization that we're all equal and that worldly things are transitory!
How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves!
As with so many things, most people seek justice in very different quarters, and grumble because they themselves receive so little of it.
Open your eyes, be fair in your own dealings first! Give whatever there is to give! You can always—always—give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness! If everyone were to give in this way and didn't scrimp on kindly words, there would be much more love and justice in the world!
Give and you shall receive, much more that you ever thought possible. Give and give again. Keep hoping, keep trying, keep giving! People who give will never be poor!
If you follow this advice, within a few generations, people will never have to feel sorry for poor little beggar children again, because there won't be any!
The world has plenty of room, riches, money and beauty. God has created enough for each and every one of us. Let us begin by dividing it more fairly. | 
