Page 393 - The Secret Museum

life was going to offer her adventures.

The words are written in Dutch, so Erika read the words aloud to me in

translation. ‘Remember, every cloud has a silver lining.’ Knowing Anne’s fate, as we
do now, the words are desperately sad. She never had a chance to blossom in life.
She died, of typhus, starving and alone, three months before her 16th birthday, in
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Her story is world famous because of her diary, which is filled with closely
observed detail about her life in hiding, and with self-reflection. It is a must-read.
She pours her heart on to the pages, describing how she feels during those two years.
Anne Frank often felt misunderstood by her mother, she adored her father (who she

called Pim) and she longed to feel closer to her sister, Margot. She was irritated by
the German dentist whom she barely knew and with whom she had to share a room.
In her diary, she names him Dussel, which translates as ‘numbskull’. That tells you
what she thought of him.

Slowly, she begins to fall in love with the son of the family the Frank family
shares their annexe with: Peter van Daan. She describes in intimate detail what went
on day to day among the eight residents of this secret annexe until they were
tragically betrayed, discovered by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps.

Of the eight people who hid in the secret annexe only Otto, Anne’s father,
survived the camps. When he made it back to Amsterdam he was given his daughter’s

diary papers by Miep Gies, one of the small group of employees and friends who had
helped, fed and kept the Frank family and their fellow hideaways undiscovered for so
long.

She had rescued the diary, and some stories Anne had written, from the secret
annexe, hoping to return them to Anne after the war. She gave everything to Otto
Frank, with the words, ‘Here is your daughter Anne’s legacy to you.’

Otto knew about the diary: Anne had kept it in his briefcase at night. He had
promised her he would never read it, and he never had. It took him a great deal of
courage to do so, knowing she was no longer alive. He had to read it in short bursts,

because the memories were so painful.
Although he recognized a lot of the scenes she described, and even some of the
lines she wrote – as she had sometimes read bits of her diary aloud to everyone in the

annexe – her father was surprised by the depth of emotion she described. He hadn’t
known how she really felt, or how self-critical she was.

In talking about her diary, he said, ‘My conclusion, as I had been on very, very
good terms with Anne, is that most parents don’t really know their children.’

He did know one thing for sure, though – that she would have wanted her diary to
be published. Within its pages, she wrote: ‘You’ve known for a long time that my
greatest wish is to be a journalist and, later on, a famous writer. In any case, after the
war, I’d like to publish a book called The Secret Annexe.’