Melanie Martin Goes Dutch (27 page)

They have now spent two whole years in hiding. Poor Anne is getting bored and hungry. All they usually have to eat is porridge, stale bread, rotten potatoes, beans, sauerkraut, and spinach. (And I was complaining about fondu!) But she keeps writing and reading and she says, “I love Holland,” and she says she loves the Dutch and it's a glorious spring and the chestnut tree outside is in full bloom. It's really incredible how she stayed calm and cheerful when she had every reason not to be.

We also read a part where Anne hopes she'll be an author someday. Anne wrote, “I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”

Suddenly Mom's voice got wobbly and her eyes got shiny.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“It's just so poignant,” Mom said.

“What's
poignant?
”

“Sad, bittersweet, touching.”

“
What
is?” I asked. I wondered if that was a stupid question. Or an insensitive one?

“Oh sweet pea, it just makes me sad to think of this lonely, hard-working, talented girl. She was just a few years older than you—the age of my students. And she was an optimist, and a self-improver, full of hope and ambition and even gratitude!”

Mom's voice was still wobbling, so I added, “She should have had her whole life ahead of her.”

Mom reread the line where Anne wrote that her “greatest wish” is to become a journalist and “a famous writer.” Anne even wrote that she wanted to publish a book about living in the Secret Annex!

It almost makes you feel a little better about snooping into her diary because she wanted to share her work and because she
did
become a famous writer. She became the most famous girl writer in the world.

But it also makes you feel so much worse because Anne Frank could have written lots of books and lived lots of years—and maybe even become a “mumsie.”

She was just getting started.

Dear Diary,

We just finished Anne Frank's diary.

We read where she wrote, “We're going to be hungry, but anything is better than being discovered.” And, “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

I don't know if Anne was ever an ordinary kid, but I know she was an extraordinary teenager.

Mom was reading me an entry about how there are two Annes: an inside one and an outside one, a cheerful one and a deeper one, a bad one and a good one. Then Mom stopped reading.

“That's it?” I said.

“That's it,” Mom said. The diary ends in the middle because the Gestapo—Nazi police—burst in on them and sent them away to concentration camps, where they all died except the father.

Even though I already knew that Anne never got to turn sixteen, the end of the book still came as sort of a shock. I just sat there all heavy and numb.

Dad came in and sat down with us. “You finished the book?”

“It ends in the middle,” I said. “It should have ended with ‘Hurray! The war is over and now I'm going back to school. Yours, Anne.’”

“She almost made it,” Dad said. “The Americans and British landed in France on June 6, 1944, and the war was over within the year. But that was the summer the Franks were arrested. Anne died of a disease called typhus in the concentration camp the next spring.”

“What about the friends, the ones who helped hide them and who found the diary?” I asked. “Did they get in trouble?”

Dad said that they were punished but not killed.

“They were heroes too, just like the soldiers,” Mom said. “And like firefighters, and the police, and all the people who risk their lives to protect others.”

Dad said there's an Anne Frank Center downtown and it teaches children about Anne Frank, tolerance, and “the dangers of discrimination.”

Well, I will tell you one thing: I can't stop thinking about Anne Frank. Normally I get a song from the
radio stuck in my head, but now I have Anne Frank stuck in my head.

Usually when I finish a book I like, I feel proud of myself but also sort of sad that the book is over. In this case, I feel sad because Anne Frank's
life
was over. She didn't get to grow up.

When the Nazis started taking over Germany, Anne's family went to Holland. When the Nazis took over Holland, they went into hiding. And when the Nazis raided their Secret Annex, they went to concentration camps. They couldn't just stay put and feel safe and live their lives!

And millions of perfectly nice people got treated like this. Anne was just one.

How could this have happened? How could grown-ups kill each other and let kids die??

I guess sometimes just feeling safe is a luxury.

And just being kind or helpful makes a difference.

Would I risk my life to help my friends if they needed me? I think I would. (But I'd probably whine about it.)

I hope I can stay aware of what's important and what's not.

Right now, this very second, I feel like I “get it.” And I'm going to keep trying to see the Big Picture and be a Better Person.

But don't expect me to have an instant personality transplant or anything. I am still a kid!

Dear Diary,

I just wrote a poem for Mom. It's sort of dumb but it's the kind of thing she'll appreciate.

Better late than never,

Dear Diary,

Mom liked my poem and showed me some Rembrandt self-portraits. He looked wise and kind. Mom said “soulful.” Mom also showed me a Vermeer book that shows cool close-ups of his signatures. Sometimes he combined the V and M of Vermeer, like this:

Yours,