If she were alive, she'd be celebrating her 78th birthday today. Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (born : 12 June 1929) died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp at age 15 in March 1945.
We were in Amsterdam last winter and the hiding place of Franks, now recognized by a sign that reads simply "Anne Frank Huis", was one of the places we could not stop ourselves from visiting though we were "officially" on honeymoon in Holland. Being there was like re-living the pages from her diary again. The secret attic, the bookcase that covered the door to it, her life in hiding all came alive and so did the questions. All through, I kept wondering what my life was like at 15. And all I could remember was a cocooned childhood, still nursing the first crush of teenage, petty jealousies amongst girlfriends, sibling rivalries.................Guess, so would have been hers, had the world let it be.
The pages of her diary are replete with such girlie delights:
and a wisdom that belies her age:
"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.....I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out." - Anne Frank
Shot at Amsterdam
