Page 392 - The Secret Museum

ANNE FRANK WROTE THIS POEM for her friend Juultje Ketellapper in a friendship book

that lives in the archives of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Erika Prins, who is a historian working in the Collections Department of the Anne
Frank House museum, lifted the book out of its storage box and laid it on a pillow.

It is now rather scuffed but, once, the cover was of clean cream linen. It has green
leather edging and a buckle to fasten it closed. On the front in red is the word
‘Poësie’.

Poësiealbums were a tradition in Holland among schoolgirls well before the days
of email and Facebook. Every girl had one. You would buy a book and hand it
around to your parents, teacher and your friends, and each person would write a
verse inside. Maybe you have a book like this too? I know I do: an autograph book
from Disney World filled with poems and messages from my friends when we left

primary school aged 11.

Anne Frank and Juultje were just like every other schoolgirl. They were in a class
together at the Montessori school in Amsterdam in 1939 and went to each other’s
birthday parties. In a photograph of Anne at her tenth birthday party, on 12 June 1939,
you can see Juultje and another friend of Anne’s, Kitty Egyedi. In the same month,
Kitty gave Juultje the album I saw in the archives. It was a present for her 11th
birthday.

On the first page, Juultje wrote;

I was given this album by my friend Kitty Egyedi on my birthday and I hope
I’ll have happy memories of everyone who writes in it. Amsterdam 26 June

1939.

She handed it to Kitty, and then to Anne. Anne wrote on pages three and four of the
book. On the right hand page she wrote her poem; on the left hand side, she glued in a
photograph of herself; and, in each corner of the left-hand page, she wrote the words
‘For-get-me-not.’

I could imagine Anne sticking in that photograph of herself – that same fun,
expressive face, now so famous – then carefully writing her words into her friend’s
book. Her writing was very neat.

Erika still has two of her own albums from school. She explained that girls would
take a lot of care when writing in each other’s books – ‘We used to draw pencil
lines, then write our poem, then rub the pencil out so our writing was in straight

lines.’

Anne Frank’s poem was written when Jews were (more or less) treated like other
citizens in Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s family was Jewish and had left Germany to
escape persecution. They had grown to love their new country. Anne had lots of
friends and, as her determined poem shows, she was full of optimism, believing that