wordsforhire

14 August 1944

My heart is wracked with pain.  My chest feels like there is a hole inside of it trying to suck me dry from the inside.  I can barely hold my…what is supposed to be a pen: the beloved book my father gave me for my birthday two years ago is gone.  I think I left it back at our hiding place.  I did not have time to grab it when the soldiers rushed inside.  I only hope they did not find it so that those that helped us will not be incriminated by my words.  How could I have been so careless to keep their true names?

I only know the day because there is one kind soldier here; he can’t be much older than my sister, Margot.  He still has baby fat on his face which is gentle, much like Peter Van Pels had when he first arrived at the Achterhuis.  I can tell he doesn’t understand completely what is happening.  He is literally a soldier boy that does as he is told.  However, his blue eyes shed some hope on me that I may make it out of this “concentration camp” alive.  His kind demeanor towards me could get him in trouble, I understand that, but since the loss of my beloved journal I have to have favors from someone in order for me to dispel this need I have of writing.

I must go now, I hear someone and if they catch me with paper I will certainly be punished.

--Anne
 

14 August 1944

The noise I heard before was only the sound of rats trying to get inside.  I still am not used to the difference between the scuttling of rats compared to the scuttling of soldiers.

Conditions here are terrible.  I continue to lose track of the days; they bleed together in one horrible distortion of what I imagine Hell to be like.  

 I cannot be sure of how long it took between the soldiers finding us in our hiding place to them bringing us here.  It felt as if it was only one day yet it also felt as if an eternity had slipped by without me knowing it.

I hear noises outside again…
 

29 August 1944

I do not get the time to write as I would like to.  Neither do I have much of the strength it requires for staying up passed curfew hours any longer.  The food they give us is worse than the provisions we managed to secure when we were in hiding.  Oh how I long to go back to my Father’s Achterhuis.  I may have complained about the situation there but I would give anything to have the selfishness of Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer over the conditions the German soldiers have offered us here.

I do have to wonder if they laugh at us at night when they force us into beds that a buxomly woman would never be able to fit in.  When I lie flat on my back I can only make a fist between my own chest and the bunk above me.  I hit my head often throughout the night as I toss and turn in my discomfort.  I perhaps secretly hope that one of those times I hit my head I won’t wake up again—that I will have hit my head hard enough to give me enough sleep that I won’t feel so tired anymore.  Margot gets less sleep than I do—she sleeps on the bunk above me and wakes up every time I hit my head against her bed.  She has finally stopped muttering to me about being careful because she knows it is in vain.

I can no longer keep my eyes open.

--Anne
 

7 September 1944

My father is dead, I am sure of it.  We were separated our first day after being deported once again and I saw them pushing him around with such brutal force it makes me angry.  But you cannot show emotion here.  You cannot cry, laugh, smile or even show anger.  You will be punished.  But they can never stop me from weeping with words.

It was within the chaos of getting off our train when we were separated from Father.  My dear sweet father sent alone to a place I imagine is much the same as here.  I saw him dying the moment he was pulled away from his family; I could see it in his eyes.  His life just wisped away with each step he was forced to take in the opposite direction.

They stripped Margot, Mother, and me; shaved our hair from our heads (I dread how Margot must be feeling about that, she loved her hair—it was certainly a pride for her that I never held for my own hair); and they made us march in line with other new arrivals.  They said it was a precaution to make sure no one was sick.  Augustus has told me that the Jewish people are here for our own protection.  They wish to keep us safe within these walls.  I can’t be sure if he really believes that or not for I have seen more deaths here than I have in my entire life.

The hardest part I have to write about is the nearly six hundred members of people that were killed a few days ago.  That’s not what we’re being told, but I am sure they are all dead.  They took every child under fifteen years of age—which I was spared from because I turned fifteen only three months ago—as well as a few adults for the purpose of “experimenting.”  I heard screams before the air was raped with silence.  It was the most eerie silence I had ever experienced in my life.  I wanted to scream to make their pain heard.

I am grateful for only one thing at this time: Augustus was transferred with us.  It pleases me to see him even if his face is hardening daily into the face of a man without feelings.  Already he has helped Margot, Mother, and me: he has given me extra rationings of food.  It helps stifle the gnawing hunger only a little, but enough to help me sleep during the nights.  I do have to be grateful to him for that.
 
 

9 October 1944

Margot and I have been moved to an infirmary that is dark as night throughout the entire day.  The only light we get, and which I write by, is through a hole mother dug so she could slip extra rations through for Margot and me.  I do not know where she is obtaining extra rationings.  Perhaps Augustus is helping her like he helped me, though I cannot imagine how she would know to go to him.

I want to tear my skin off I itch all over.  Even now I have to stop every few words just to scratch some place new.  I hate it here.  I cannot imagine how human beings can justify treating other human beings this way.  They obviously do not see us as humans.

I need to go.  I have to satiate the itching of my entire body.

--Anne
 

20 October 1944

I learned that what my mother was giving Margot and me while we were in the infirmary was her own rationings.  It makes me sick to my stomach to know that my mother was starving herself in order to feed us because I once said that I hated her and felt she must surely have hated me.  I know she loved me and cares for Margot and me more than her own life.  Such a blessed woman though I worry for her because she still is not eating.

There is rumor of another camp that some members of this camp are to be deported to.  I would make a wish one way or the other but I know either camp of prisoners will be as miserable as the other.
 

3 November 1944

Mother was left behind.  Margot and I were roughly torn from her arms and marched off to a camp that doesn’t even have enough buildings to accommodate all they shove here, just tents that are supposed to protect us through the rigid winter that is approaching.

I am truly starting to understand the concept of hating someone.  I do believe I hate these soldiers.  I even am starting to hate Augustus for allowing my mother to be separated from Margot and me.  He was starting to turn into one of them anyway.  I am justified in hating them.
 
 

26 December 1944

Today is the day after Christians celebrate the birth of their Christ.  I heard the soldiers celebrating yesterday, merry with drink and warm in their cabins while the prisoners huddled together for warmth.  How could they believe in a Savior that would allow them to treat other human beings this way?  The God and Son that the Jewish people believe in would have compassion towards us.  Our God will punish them one day, perhaps.
 

February 1945

I saw Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz today, two of my friends whom I miss dearly.  They were in another camp separated from me only by a fence.  I longed to hug them but dared not stick my arms through the wires.  I’ve heard horror stories of what happens to people that do that.  It was nice to see them, even if I couldn’t receive the comfort from them that I longed to have.

Margot is stuck in bed.  She can hardly move and barely eats.  I fear for her life.  I cannot begin to understand why these people are doing what they are doing; I have just come to realize, however, that Margot and I are not likely to make it out of this camp alive.

I am shaking so horribly that it is nearly impossible to read my writing; it is starting to become more of a burden each time to write.  It saps my strength just to hold a pen anymore.
 
 

1945

Margot is dead.  I feel so shattered and broken.  It is the first time I have cried since being taken away from my father. I do not even know what day it is to commemorate my sister.  Margot was so much stronger of a person than me and if she has perished here I know I soon will, too.