Seeing images of death and destruction of the Holocaust can often be gut-wrenching. It is true that a photograph tells a thousand words, and it is also true that it doesn’t tell us the full story. A photo is always a snapshot in time.
That is one of the reasons why I do very few posts with horrific Holocaust images. I find the words of those who saw the horror unfolding much more haunting.
Hélène Berr was a young French woman of Jewish ancestry and faith who documented her life in a notebook during the Nazi occupation of France. She is frequently referred to as the French Anne Frank. Like Anne Frank, Helene was also murdered in Bergen-Belsen on 10 April 1945. That was 23 years before I was born.
The following are some of her words:
“…because you shouldn’t forget anything.”
“…I want to stay very elegant and dignified at all times so that people can see what that means. I want to do whatever is most courageous. This evening, I believe that means wearing the star.”
4 June 1942 “Life continues to be strangely shabby and strangely beautiful,”
June 1942 “Here we had tea on the small table, listening to the “Kreutzer” sonata… He sat at the piano without being asked and played some Chopin. Afterward, I played the violin.”
11 August 1942 “I couldn’t really make out Papa’s note because Maman was sobbing so hard that it stopped me concentrating. For the time being I couldn’t cry. But if misfortune does come, I shall be sorrowful enough, sorrowful for all time.”
20 September 1942 “All day long there’s a continuous line of women who have lost their children, men who have lost their wives, children who have lost their parents, people coming to ask for news of children and women, and others offering to take them in. Women weep. Yesterday one of them fainted.”
23 July 1942 “I forget that I have to lead a positive life,”
November 1943 “There aren’t many Jews in Paris anymore.”
December 1943
Helene and her parents were arrested on the morning of 8 March 1943. After incarceration at the Drancy Relocation Camp just East of Paris (for almost three weeks), she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. After eight months at Auschwitz, Hélène was deported to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in the autumn of 1944. In the winter of 1944–45, a raging typhus epidemic spread throughout the camp. This caused Hélène to contract typhus, making her very ill and weak. After the winter passed, she could no longer stand or walk. There was a roll call at the camp, which Hélène failed to attend, given her condition and illness. Because she had not participated in the roll call, she was severely beaten by a Nazi officer, thus making her even weaker. She died on 10 April 1945 from typhus, five days prior to its liberation by the British and American armies.
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Philip Mechanicus was born, three days before Adolph Hitler, in Amsterdam on 17 April 1889 to a Jewish family. After he left school, he started to work for the social-democratic daily newspaper Het Volk in the shipping and records department. He worked his way up to become a journalist. After finishing his military service, he worked in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) for the Sumatra Post in Medan and De Locomotief in Semarang.
In 1919, he returned to The Netherlands. He joined the foreign affairs staff of the Algemeen Handelsblad in 1920. He wrote reports about the Soviet Union. It was later collected and published in book form as Van Sikkel en Hamer (From Sickle and Hammer, 1932).
After the Nazis invaded the Netherlands during World War II, Mechanicus was banned from working as a journalist. He briefly wrote under the alias Pére Celjenets. On 27 September 1942, he was arrested in the rear compartment of a tram in Amsterdam for not wearing a yellow star.
Mechanicus was transferred to the Westerbork transit camp on 7 November 1942, where he kept a diary from 28 May 28 1943 to 28 February 1944. He was deported in March 1944 to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp and sent to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was murdered upon arrival on 15 October 1944.
Below are excerpts from his diary:
Friday, May 28 1943 Received a new brother today, who introduced himself to all one hundred patients in the room and shook their hands. Very unusual on Westerbork, where a brother comes and goes, without further ado. Apparently a decent guy. And a professional man, it shows. Just arrived. He looks immaculately clean: snow-white nurse’s coat, which shines and shines against the filthy, filthy coats in which most of the other brothers shuffle around. Lack of cleanliness. The cleaning ladies have been in the room since yesterday instead of the cleaners who have been transported. They are led by a captain, every inch a gentleman, tall, aristocratically built, straight as an arrow, who has literary aspirations and from whose hand I have a play to read under my pillow. The cleaners used to talk, and often annoying, to the patients; Now the patients talk, and often annoying talk, to the cleaning ladies. What a delight to behold, young, nice women walking around well-dressed, one in trousers, the other in skirts. Roses in a sandy plain! They behave bravely. They are not bitter but have gallows humour. Their motto is: they won’t get us under, never! They sweep and scrub as if they had never done anything else: they carefully move every pan, every pair of shoes, every chair, every suit of clothes so as not to leave a speck of dust behind, not to leave a spot dry. Should you have seen those cleaners’ scrubs: with the French touch! How long will women maintain their sense of duty at this high level? Visited camp doctor v.d.R. Lives in a room of ± sixteen m3 with his wife, adult son and daughter. Told me he had a case of attempted suicide today: mother and two children. Timely intervention and psychological effect on the woman. High number of suicides: an average of four per week. In my barracks about six weeks ago a man of about seventy years old attempted to end his life by hanging. The eighty-year-old mother of one of my friends committed suicide these days upon arrival in Westerbork by taking poison she brought with her. Doctor v.d.R. was deeply impressed by the misery he witnesses every day, and by the weekly transports. He considered England complicit in the fate and destruction of the Jews because, although knowing what was going on, it did not intervene more forcefully to bring Germany to reason. It had to flatten Berlin and, if necessary treat it with mustard gas, then the war would be over within six weeks. If England didn’t stop the destruction of the Jews, he would wish for Germany to win the war as punishment for England. The German people had to be exterminated, and sterilized. The doctor allowed himself to be driven by his sentiment and lost sight of all objectivity, finally bursting into sobs and punching”
Friday October 15, 1943 “I cannot let go of the thought of the hostile mood of the various groups. New facts of animosity come to light every time. To Schlesinger to propose to him that he draft a proclamation, which, in the case of peace, appeals to the conscience and minds of the camp residents to maintain unity and to rise above their own petty feelings, and which is marked by many prominent Dutch and several prominent German Jews. Schlesinger is delighted and spontaneously approves the design that I present to him. He undertakes to have the proclamation printed in secret. Trottel, who accompanies me, also approves of the plan. I undertake to appoint two more Dutch Jews who are committed to the cause. Schlesinger, for his part, will appoint three German Jews.
The German authorities have rejected Dr. Spanier’s advice. That is why there will be another transport of a thousand Jews next Tuesday; unrest in the camp. I have found Dr. Willy Polak and Professor Meijers willing to work with the German Jews to maintain peace.”
Monday December 27 “Christmas passed drearily, with penal labour. One consolation was that the weather was mild.
Small conflict when picking foils. I instruct a woman and melt the grease from the condenser on the edge of the stove to make it more manageable to make. Stoker’s protest. Me: ‘You’re interfering in things that don’t concern you.’ The stoker calls in the German supervisor, my colleague. “That thing must go!” Hand movement in the direction of the capacitor. “That thing isn’t going away. You have nothing to command.’ Exchange of words, a bit of excitement. He roars—I scream. Me: ‘You Krauts always have to forbid something, otherwise you won’t be happy.’ He: ‘What, Kraut!’ His eyes bulge out of their sockets, ominous. ‘Oe ist kein gooder Kamerad. I only know Jews here.’ I had no intention of hurting him and later I went after him, grabbed his arm to throne him and settled the matter. He pulls away and walks away angrily. Later the manager at the roll call, a Dutchman: ‘You have had words. Try to settle the matter. Otherwise, I’ll have to report it. Otherwise, he’ll do it and I’ll look crazy.’ Me: ‘I’ve already tried it, but he doesn’t want to. Try to convince him that it was not meant so seriously.’ ‘Good.’ The inspector (the German boy with the steely eyes and curls under his jockey cap) appears at the roll call: ‘You said rottenmof. That’s an insult. That’s not possible. We are Jews among ourselves here.’ ‘I will put the matter straight.’ ‘Yes, but I cannot accept that here in this company. I have to report that.’ Me: ‘That’s your business, but among guys, they accept each other’s apology and hand if a word has been said in anger. That is our Dutch habit.’ He: ‘If Nussbaum wants that, I’m fine with it, but then you have to apologize publicly.’ ‘Good.’ The inspector turns away in the direction of Nussbaum. Nussbaum on stage, offering me his hand. Me: “Nussbaum, I didn’t mean anything offensive by my expression, but if you feel offended, I apologize.” Nussbaum, sentimental: “It’s beautiful like that!” The little conflict is buried in the noise of the voices of two hundred and fifty people; only those sitting nearby notice it.
I had resolved not to have any conflict. But the German command tone, their Gemass rule, gets on the nerves of the Dutch, including mine. Dutch people, who sit at the same table as Germans, can be heard shouting: ‘Those damn Germans; I can no longer see them, I can no longer hear their language.’ The same everywhere: ‘We don’t like them; they have to leave after the war. They have the faults of the Prussians and the Jews together.’ The love of humanity is put to a hard test here.”
Thursday, January 27, 1944 This morning, men and women, apparently gentlemen and ladies, looted a potato truck that stopped in front of the Central Kitchen. They boldly reached into the sacks that were lined up on the wagon, ready to be unloaded, and transferred potatoes into their sacks or bags which they had with them. Not a hint or shadow of embarrassment. Many people, formerly well-off, always go out armed with a bag, briefcase or handle bag, hoping to catch something along the way, potatoes or carrots. Some with a barrel, for collecting loose pieces of coal. The entire camp population is out for petty robbery. Many people come to the kitchen windows and quickly receive a few carrots and a few potatoes from the potato peelers, accompanied by the admonition: ‘Get out quickly, because Van Dam is always lurking; and then we go to the 51. Get away quickly! It’s dangerous!’ In the loop.
This morning, I witnessed a female member of the kitchen staff, Mrs. L., sitting on the edge of the potato spinner filling herself a bag with boiled potatoes, from which ten people could be served. The same picture in the kitchen over and over again: petty theft on a large scale. People lack but exaggerate their greed. On the one hand, the robbers are doing well, on the other hand, they are experiencing a major shortage due to too small portions. An inmate of my barracks paid eighty-five guilders for a pound of butter and exchanged another pack of cigarettes for a pound of sugar. Cigarettes are sold at one guilder each.”
Monday February 28, 1944 “Everyone robs here and no one is ashamed of it or blames the other. This morning, a few decent men and women, who were waiting for the dropouts while unloading a wagon of potatoes, emptied a bag of potatoes halfway without the intervention of the man on the wagon, also a Jew. The boundaries of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable are blurring. The practice of life here proves how easily a respected citizen, a pillar of the social order and of private property, slides down the slope into the world that thrives on plunder, when hunger begins to become acute. One can think sportily, like the rascal who steals a few apples or pears or chestnuts or carrots from a cart without betraying a criminal tendency or compromising his future. Here, one could steal three potatoes from a cart, casually, or grab them from the street to eat them, at work or in the barracks, to supplement the meager daily ration. I will do that. Like many others, I regularly walk with a few raw potatoes in the pockets of my overalls or nibble on a winter carrot. Everyone who has teeth chews on a winter carrot, starting with the children, who have strong enough teeth to bite. The whole camp is scrambling carrots; the whole camp is eating potatoes. Can I do more? Good housefathers and neat housemothers steal bags full of carrots or potatoes, from which they make steaming meals to feed their offspring, who are constantly washing and not getting enough. Early in the morning, when supervision is not yet strict, they attack the kitchen, where the potatoes are waiting for the peelers. Complete burglary with robbery. They push coals back and hide them under their coat or cloaks. They rob onions from the boxes on their way from the tow truck to the kitchen or the canteen. There is robbery in small and large, and whoever starts in small inevitably ends up in large, which is then called large. Mothers are ashamed of their sons, who come home with loot and do not know whether to encourage or discourage them. To discourage means: a chronic lack; encourage: stimulating a bad element, which they could later experience when they return to normal society. The old standards of decency have faded or disappeared, in a society in which there is no personal property, in which everyone who sits at the well takes what he can get, in which everyone, or almost everyone, who lacks, or fears a shortage, of the great hope decreases without society itself opposing it or without strict action by the guardians of order, who, by the way, are guilty of the same evil. Them—first and foremost. In this respect, society is certainly rotten: the human type is no good. Everyone here is a robber on a small or large scale, without being a criminal. Anyone who succeeds in stealing a batch of potatoes also demands space on the stove to cook his batch, often at the expense of the time of those who want to warm their legitimate leftover or portion, on coals of the community, which yields to the demand. Robbery has become commonplace and is justified by the community. People glory in the loot. There is a persistent rumour that Mr Gomperts has been arrested in Amsterdam.
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Renia Spiegel was born on 18 June 1924, in Uhryńkowce, then in Poland and now in Western Ukraine, to Polish-Jewish parents Bernard Spiegel and Róża Maria Leszczyńska.
Like many other teenage girls, Renia kept a diary. She started hers at age 15, on 31 January 1939, nine months before German and Slovak troops invaded Poland.
Renia Spiegel had just turned 18 when the Nazis found her in hiding and murdered her. Her 700-page diary survived. Rather than my telling you her story, I will let Renia’s words do the talking. Below are just a few excerpts from her diary. The photographs I used are of Renia, her sister and her mother to show the contrast of the happier times. Her last name Spiegel translates to Mirror. Let us use her words as a mirror to our souls.
January 31, 1939 Why did I decide to start a diary today? Has something important happened? Have I discovered that my friends are keeping diaries of their own? No! I just want a friend. Somebody I can talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who will feel what I feel, believe what I say and never reveal my secrets. No human being could ever be that kind of friend.
Today, my dear diary is the beginning of our deep friendship. Who knows how long it will last? It might even continue until the end of our lives.
In any case, I promise to always be honest with you. In return, you’ll listen to my thoughts and concerns, but you’ll remain silent like an enchanted book, locked up with an enchanted key and hidden in an enchanted castle. You will not betray me.
First of all, allow me to introduce myself. I’m a student at the Maria Konopnicka Middle School for Girls. My name is Renia, or at least that is what my friends call me. I have a little sister, Ariana, who wants to be a movie star. (She’s been in some movies already.)
Our mother lives in Warsaw. I used to live in a beautiful manor house on the Dniester River. I loved it there. There were storks on old Linden trees. Apples glistened in the orchard, and I had a garden with neat, charming rows of flowers. But those days will never return. There is no manor house anymore, no storks on old Linden trees, no apples or flowers. All that remains are memories, sweet and lovely. And the Dniester River, which flows, distant, strange and cold—which hums, but not for me anymore.
Now I live in Przemysl, at my grandmother’s house. But the truth is, I have no real home. That’s why sometimes I get so sad that I have to cry. I miss my mamma and her warm heart. I miss the house where we all lived together.
Again the need to cry takes over me When I recall the days that used to be The linden trees, house, storks and butterflies Far… somewhere…too far for my eyes I see and hear what I miss The wind that used to lull old trees And nobody tells me anymore About the fog, about the silence The distance and darkness outside the door I will always hear this lullaby See our house and pond laid by And linden trees against the sky…
But I also have joyous moments, and there are so many of them. So many! Let me introduce some of my classmates to you.
September 6, 1939 War has broken out! Since last week, Poland has been fighting with Germany. England and France also declared war on Hitler and surrounded him on three sides. But he isn’t sitting idly. Enemy planes keep flying over Przemysl, and every now and then there’s an air raid siren. But, thank God, no bombs have fallen on our city so far. Other cities like Krakow, Lwow, Czestochowa and Warsaw have been partially destroyed.
But we’re all fighting, from young girls to soldiers. I’ve been taking part in female military training—digging air raid trenches, sewing gas masks. I’ve been serving as a runner. I have shifts serving tea to the soldiers. I walk around and collect food for the soldiers. In a word, I’m fighting alongside the rest of the Polish nation. I’m fighting and I’ll win!
March 16, 1940 Nora and I have decided that ten years from today, wherever we are, whether we’re still friends or angry at each other, in good health or bad health, we’re going to meet or write to each other and compare what’s changed in our lives. So remember: March 16, 1950.
I’ve started liking a boy named Holender. We’ve been introduced to each other, but he’s already forgotten me. He’s well-built and broad-shouldered. He has pretty black eyes and falcon-like eyebrows. He’s beautiful.
April 24, 1940 Terrible things have been happening. There were unexpected nighttime raids that lasted three days. People were rounded up and sent somewhere deep inside Russia. So many acquaintances of ours were taken away. There was terrible screaming at school. Girls were crying. They say 50 people were packed into one cargo train car. You could only stand or lie on bunks. Everybody was singing “Poland has not yet perished.”
About that Holender boy, I mentioned: I fell in love, I chased him like a madwoman, but he was interested in some girl named Basia. Despite that, I still like him, probably more than any other boy I know. Sometimes I feel this powerful, overwhelming need…maybe it’s just my temperament. I should get married early so I can withstand it.
December 8, 1940 Suddenly, I love him like crazy. Just think, everything was about to go dormant and today it sprung back to life. Nothing happened—but still so much! He played with my hood, stroked it, came closer! Wonderful Zygus, wonderful, so wonderful!!!
Hey, let’s drink our wine Let’s drink from our lips And when the cup runs dry Let’s switch to drinking blood Wanting and yearning Inspiration and love burning Let them start a fire Let rage burn like a pyre But remember, girl, that flames travel in your veins that blood can burst you from inside Wanting and yearning Inspiration and love burning Let them start a fire Let rage burn like a pyre Both wine and lips are red One life before you are dead Our hearts are hungry, young, on fire Only for each other beat. Remember, girl, that flames travel in your veins
December 10, 1940 You know, when I see Zygus, I have this blissful, pleasant feeling that’s unpleasant at the same time. Something paralyzes me. Ah, that idiot, if he only knew how much I love him. There’s an invisible thread connecting us. It can break, but no…If we could really be together, it would be wonderful and terrible at the same time! I don’t know. I have no idea what’s happening to me.
April 27, 1941
Mamma, I’m so low. You know, sometimes I find excuses for Zygus. For example, he didn’t come to see me and I said it was just because he was feeling shy (he is easily embarrassed!). Today, poor, dear Granny made a clumsy attempt to help me feel better, but instead, she only lacerated my already bleeding heart. It will take a while for it to heal. I don’t know why this day feels so dirty.
May 20, 1942
Yesterday Z. came to pick me up from my job at the factory and we walked out holding hands. Orchards are in blossom, May is shining with its blue skies and I’m shining, too, with joy. I feel like his little daughter and I like it oh so much!
May 23, 1942
Something has been bothering me terribly the last few days. I know Nora is thinking about what it’s going to be like when my romance ends. She’s accusing me of taking it too seriously and (does she have a clearheaded view of it?) she makes my heart ache. I know she doubts whether Z. really loves me. I know it; I can feel it.
And Zygus sometimes says something without realizing it and it hurts me so badly. Sometimes, when it bothers me too much, I think about running away. But when I hold him tightly, when he’s near, so very near, I feel I wouldn’t be able to part with him for all the treasures in the world. That would mean giving up my soul.
Nora, you are wrong. You’re different, but I’d be left with nothing.
When Z. is good to me, everything is good and bright and full of sunshine. Such a shame the month is about to pass. The nights are filled with stars. They’re so infatuating and I dream so much, I dream, I dream.
June 2, 1942
Now I know what the word ecstasy means. It’s indescribable; it’s the best thing two loving creatures can achieve. For the first time, I felt this longing to become one, to be one body and…well…to feel more, I could say. To bite and kiss and squeeze until blood shows. And Zygus talked about a house and a car and about being the best man for me.
Lord God, I’m so grateful to you for this affection and love and happiness! I’m writing these words differently, whispering them in my mind so I don’t scare them away or blow them out. I don’t want to think about anything, I just want to desire so badly, so passionately like…you know. You will help me, Bulus and God.
June 14, 1942
It’s dark, I can’t write. Panic in the city. We fear a pogrom; we fear deportations. Oh God Almighty! Help us! Take care of us; give us your blessing. We will persevere, Zygus and I, please let us survive the war. Take care of all of us, of the mothers and children. Amen.
July 5, 1942
We feared it and then it finally happened. The ghetto. The notices went out today. Supposedly, they’re planning to deport half the people. Great Lord God, have mercy. My thoughts are so dark, it’s a sin to even think them.
I saw a happy-looking couple today. They’d been on an outing; they were on their way back, amused and happy. Zygus, my darling, when will we go on an outing like theirs? I love you as much as she loves him. I would look at you the same way. But she’s so much happier, that’s the only thing I know. Or perhaps—oh, Holy God, you are full of mercy—our children will say one day, “Our mother and father lived in the ghetto.” Oh, I strongly believe it.
July 25, 1942
The Jewish Ghetto Police came last night. We haven’t paid for everything yet. Oh! Why can’t money rain down from the sky? It’s people’s lives, after all. Terrible times have come. Mamma, you have no idea how terrible. But Lord God looks after us and, though I’m horribly frightened, I have trust in him.
I trust, because this morning a bright ray of sunshine came through all this darkness. It was sent by my Mamma in a letter, in the form of a wonderful photograph of her. And when she smiled at me from the photo, I thought that Holy God has us in his care! Even in the darkest moments, there is something that can make us smile. Mamma, pray for us. I send you lots of kisses. You will help me, Bulus and God.
In the evening!
My dear diary, my good, beloved friend! We’ve gone through such terrible times together and now the worst moment is upon us. I could be afraid now. But the One who didn’t leave us then will help us today too. He’ll save us. Hear, O, Israel, save us, help us. You’ve kept me safe from bullets and bombs, from grenades. Help me survive! And you, my dear mamma, pray for us today, pray hard. Think about us and may your thoughts be blessed. Mamma! My dearest, one and only, such terrible times are coming. I love you with all my heart. I love you; we will be together again. God, protect us all and Zygmunt and my grandparents and Ariana. God, into Your hands I commit myself. You will help me, Bulus and God.”
____________ “Three shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots, shots.” This line is the final entry of Renia Spiegel’s diary. It was not written by her but by her boyfriend.
When the Przemyśl Ghetto was established in July 1942, the Spiegel family moved there along with 24,000 other Jews. After about two weeks, Schwarzer, (aka Zygu), who worked with the local resistance, secretly removed Renis from the ghetto and hid her and his own parents in the attic of his Uncle’s house because they had not received the work permits they would need in order to avoid deportation to concentration camps. An unknown informant told Nazi police about the hiding place, who executed the eighteen-year-old Renia, along with Schwarzer’s parents, on the street on July 30, 1942.
Renia had left her diary with her boyfriend, Zygmunt Schwarzer, for safekeeping.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
75 years ago today Anne Frank’s diary was published. It became one of the biggest selling books of all times.
These are just some of the entries of her diary.
October 9th 1942: “Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. Miep told us about someone who’d managed to escape from there. It must be terrible in Westerbork. The people get almost nothing to eat, much less to drink, as water is available only one hour a day, and there’s only one toilet and sink for several thousand people. Men and women sleep in the same room, and women and children often have their heads shaved. Escape is almost impossible; many people look Jewish, and they’re branded by their shorn heads. If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilised places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die. I feel terrible. Miep’s accounts of these horrors are so heartrending… Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I’m actually one of them! No, that’s not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides, there are no greater enemies on earth than the Germans and Jews.”
October 20th 1942: “My hands still shaking, though it’s been two hours since we had the scare… The office staff stupidly forgot to warn us that the carpenter, or whatever he’s called, was coming to fill the extinguishers… After working for about fifteen minutes, he laid his hammer and some other tools on our bookcase (or so we thought!) and banged on our door. We turned white with fear. Had he heard something after all and did he now want to check out this mysterious looking bookcase? It seemed so, since he kept knocking, pulling, pushing and jerking on it. I was so scared I nearly fainted at the thought of this total stranger managing to discover our wonderful hiding place…”
March 29th 1944: “Mr Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course, everyone pounced on my diary.”
July 15th 1944: “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realise them.”
Like Anne Frank ,Etty (Esther) Hillesum, also kept a diary during World War 2,describing her experiences of the Holocaust. She was born in the city of Middelburg in the southwest of the Netherlands, on January 15,1914. She was the daughter of Levie Hillesum and Riva Bernstein. In 1932 she moved to Amsterdam to study law and Slavic languages.
She started her diary on March 7 1941, possibly at the suggestion of her analyst Julius Spier, whom she had been attending to for a month. Although his patient, Etty also became his secretary and friend and eventually his lover. His influence on her spiritual development is apparent in her diaries; as well as teaching her how to deal with her depressive and egocentric episodes he introduced her to the Bible and St. Augustine and helped her develop a deeper understanding of the work of Rilke and Dostoyevsky.
Etty was an intensely alive and sexual young woman, yet she felt herself plagued by what she called her ‘confounded eroticism”. But what healthy woman in her 20s isn’t interested in sex?
Rather then go to deep into her life, I feel it is better to reflect on what she felt by using some excerpts from her diary.
“This is a painful and almost insuperable step for me: committing so much that has been suppressed to a blank sheet of lined paper,” The thoughts in my head are so clear and sharp and my feelings so deep, but writing about them is hard. The main difficulty, I think, is a sense of shame. So many inhibitions, so much fear of letting go and allowing things to pour out of me, yet that is what I must do if I am ever to give my life a reasonable and satisfactory purpose. It is like the final, liberating scream that always sticks bashfully in your throat when you make love.”
“Only a few months ago I still believed that politics did not touch me and wondered if that was ‘unworldliness,’ a lack of real understanding. Now I don’t ask such questions any more”
“If there were only one decent German, then he should be cherished despite that whole barbaric gang, and because of that one decent German it is wrong to pour hatred over an entire people”
“I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave but because I know that I am dealing with human beings and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask: ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’”
“MONDAY MORNING, 9 O’CLOCK. Come on, my girl, get down to work or God help you. And no more excuses either, no little headache here or a bit of nausea there, or I’m not feeling very well. That is absolutely out of the question. You’ve just got to work, and that’s that. No fantasies, no grandiose ideas and no earth-shattering insights. Choosing a subject and finding the right words are much more important. And that is something I have to learn and for which I must fight to the death: all fantasies and dreams shall be ejected by force from my brain and I shall sweep myself clean from within, to make space for real studies, large and small. To tell the truth, I have never worked properly. It’s the same with sex. If someone makes an impression on me, I can revel in erotic fantasies for days and nights on end. I don’t think I ever realised how much energy that consumes”
“Last night I asked Han in bed, ‘Do you think someone like me ought to get married? Am I a real woman?’ Sex for me is not all that important, although sometimes I give the impression that it is. Isn’t it cheating to allow men to be taken in by that impression and then be unable to give them what they want? I am not really an earthy woman, at least not sexually. I am no tigress and that sometimes gives me a feeling of inferiority. My primitive physical passion has been diverted in many different ways and weakened by all sorts of intellectualisations, which I am sometimes ashamed of. What is primitive in me is my warmth; I have a sort of primitive love and primitive sympathy for people, for all people. I don’t think I am cut out for one man”
“And yesterday I lay on that bed, for the first time naked in his arms, and it was less a night of love than that time. And yet it was good. It was not exciting, there was no ecstasy. But it was so sweet and so safe”
“Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learnt to love Westerbork”
“Can love one person and one person only one’s whole life long strikes me as quite childish. There is something mean and impoverishing about it. Will people never learn that love brings so much more happiness and reward than sex?”
“The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart—I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world.”
“A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside with irrelevant distractions. True, there may be edifying emotions and thoughts, too, but the clutter is ever present. So let this be the aim of the meditation: to turn one’s innermost being into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous undergrowth the impede the view. So that something of “God” can enter you, and something of “Love,” too. Not the kind of love-de-luxe that you can revel in deliciously for half an hour, taking pride in how sublime you feel, but the love you can apply to small, everyday things.”
Her last words though were not written in her diary, but on a postcard she threw out of the train on transport to Auschwitz.
“Opening the Bible at random I find this: ‘The Lord is my high tower’. I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning…. We left the camp singing…. Thank you for all your kindness and care.”
Etty was murdered in Auschwitz on November 30,1943, aged 29.
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On August 4,1944 Anne Frank, her family and all the others hiding in the annex in the office building in Amsterdam are arrested.
Anne was 15 at the time, the same age my daughter is now. However my daughter is free to meet her friends, go to the shop, compete in rowing regattas and even free to go to school or the freedom to be embarrassed by her dad’s singing and dancing while he is cooking a dinner . Anne was denied all these freedoms that last years of her life.
Anne’s best friend was probably Kitty, not a human being ,but a diary. On August 1,1944 which was a Tuesday, 3 days before she was arrested, she wrote her last words to Kitty.
“Dearest Kitty,
“A bundle of contradictions” was the end of my previous letter and is the beginning of this one. Can you please tell me exactly what “a bundle of contradictions” is? What does “contradiction” mean? Like so many words, it can be interpreted in two ways: a contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within.
The former means not accepting other people’s opinions, always knowing best, having the last word; in short, all those unpleasant traits for which I’m known. The latter, for which I’m not known, is my own secret.
As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-colour joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me.
Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker – a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either.
I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne-to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why.
I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “light-hearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared.
So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am… on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why-no, I’m sure that’s the reason why I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether.
As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I I’m always up against a more powerful enemy.
A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people, who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.”
Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside g out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if… if only there were no other people in the world.
On June 25, 1947, the diary of Anne Frank is posthumously published when her father, Otto Frank, prints the first 1,500 copies in Dutch. Otto Frank had made the first transcription in German in 1946. In spring 1946 it had come to the attention of Dr. Jan Romein and his wife Annie Romein-Verschoor, two Dutch historians. They were so moved by it that Anne Romein made unsuccessful attempts to find a publisher, which led Romein to write an article for the newspaper Het Parool:
“This apparently inconsequential diary by a child, this ‘de profundis’ (which refers to Psalm 130) stammered out in a child’s voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence of Nuremberg put together.
— Jan Romein in his article “Children’s Voice” on Het Parool, 3 April 1946.
This caught the interest of Contact Publishing in Amsterdam, who approached Otto Frank to submit a Dutch draft of the manuscript for their consideration. They offered to publish, but advised Otto Frank that Anne’s candor about her emerging sexuality might offend certain conservative quarters, and suggested cuts.
Recently these cut elements of the diary were discovered. They were two pages of Anne Frank’s diary where brown paper was pasted over the writing.
The two pages, Anne, included some “dirty” jokes and more than 33 lines explaining sex, contraception and prostitution.
Below are just some of those recovered lines from Anne Frank’s diary.
The Jokes
“Do you know why the German girls of the armed forces are in the Netherlands?” she wrote. “As a mattress for the soldiers.”
“A man comes home at night and notices that another man shared the bed with his wife that evening. He searches the whole house, and finally also looks in the bedroom closet. There is a totally naked man, and when that one man asked what the other was doing there, the man in the closet answered: ‘You can believe it or not but I am waiting for the tram.'”
“A man had a very ugly wife and he did not want a relationship with her. One evening, he came home and he saw his friend lying in bed with his wife and the man said: ‘He does and I have to!!!!’ “
“A man and a woman had a relationship, and after a few months the woman’s belly was getting disturbingly big. Then, the man called a doctor who said: ‘It’s just air, Mrs., just air!!!” The man replied: ‘I am not pumping air, am I?’ “
Her thoughts about sex
About having the first period. “a sign that she is ripe to have relations with a man but one doesn’t do that of course before one is married.”
“Until I was 11 or 12, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside , though you couldn’t see them,” she wrote at one point. “What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris.”
“I sometimes imagine that someone might come to me and ask me to inform him about sexual matters. How would I go about it?” She continued to depict what she imagined were the “rhythmical movements” involved, as well as the “internal medicament” or contraception
It was clears she was well aware of adult topics like prostitution: “All men, if they are normal, go with women, women like that accost them on the street and then they go together. In Paris they have big houses for that. Papa has been there.”
I can understand why these pages weren’t included in the published version of her diary, because the publisher was probably right in the assumption that it may have offended some people. On the other hand though it shows that this teenage girl had a sense of humor and an interest in sexuality, just like any other teenage girl or boy has.
I know I referred to Anne Frank’s more naughty side, but really all this shows that she was an ordinary teenager, who had a very sad but extraordinary story to tell .
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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Dear Anne, today you would have turned 93, but we all know the history why that didn’t happen.
Some of that history is written in the diary you received on your 13th birthday, June 12 1942.So many people have read that diary, your private thoughts laid bare for the world to see. But I am sure you would not have minded that because aside it being a diary, it is also a historical record. You made sure of that because you could see and hear what was happening around you. You also heeded the call of the exiled Dutch government for people to record as much as they could.
What some people don’t realize if the Nazis would not have got to power, your diary would have looked so much different, it wouldn’t even have been written in Dutch but German, Because if the Nazis had not got to power your parents would not have had to move. Your German diary would have told a different story. The story about a different kind of anxiety. The anxiety of a regular teenage girl. Her first dance, her first kiss and perhaps even of the first time having sex with a boyfriend. The anxiety of seeing each other naked for the first time, and maybe how you blushed the first time he touched your breasts and you touched his penis. Who knows, what would be in that diary? I am not saying this to be disrespectful, far from it, like any other girl you deserved that level of intimacy but you were denied it. But your German diary would have been just that, a diary, only for you to read.
People call you an author. But you weren’t you were just a girl who had the endure something no girl should have to endure.
And like any other girl you had friends.
Lucia “Lucie” van Dijk , a Christian friend from the Montessori school. Lucie’s mother was an adamant member of the NSB,the Dutch Nazi party, until the end of the war, but Lucie’s disillusioned father left the party in 1942. You were shocked when the van Dijks became party members, but your dad ,Otto, patiently explained to her that they could still be good people even if they had distasteful politics.
Rie “Ietje” Swillens was another good friend of yours all the way through Montessori school.
Nanette Blitz Konig who was born on April 6, 1929 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. just a few months older then you. A friend and a class mate . You were in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum.
Like your family ,the Blitz family was arrested and taken to the Westerbork transit camp and from there were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was Nannette that reunited you with your sister Margot, in Bergen Belsen. However Nanette survived the war and the Holocaust. She now lives in Brazil.
Then there was another Nanette ; Nanette van Praag Sigaar.
You were also in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum, in Amsterdam. You even wrote about her in your diary. You said “Nannie is a funny, tiny, clever girl. I like her. She is smart.” What you didn’t know is that Nannie was murdered in Auschwitz on November 5,1942, just a few months after you received your diary as a birthday gift.
Your 13th birthday gift is now a gift to us all. Not just a gift but also a stark reminder of what humans are capable of doing to other humans.
You would have been 92 today. Nowadays you may have been famous as one of the first people being vaccinated against the Covid 19 virus. But you were killed by a much worse virus, hate.
Happy Birthday Anne, or rather Van Harte Gefeliciteerd.
“Three shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots, shots.” This line is the final entry of Renia Spiegel’s diary. It is the final entry but it was not written by her but by her boyfriend.
Renia had left her diary with her boyfriend ,Zygmunt Schwarzer, for safekeeping. You see Renia could not write that line because one of those three shots was for her.
Zygmunt Schwarzer had helped Renia and his own parents to hide in the attic of his Uncle’s house but an informant betrayed her whereabouts to the Nazis;s and Renia and Schwarzer’s parents were shot in the street on July 30, 1942.
Her last name Spiegel means mirror in both the German and Dutch language. Renia’s story as so many others is a mirror we should look at. If we truly look into that mirror we can only come to one conclusion. So little has been learned form the horrors of the past, so little that we are bound to repeat them.
Ending this blog with some of Renia’s own words from July 15,1942 just over 2 weeks before she was killed . May her words be a mirror to our souls.
“Remember this day; remember it well, You will tell generations to come. Since 8 o’clock today we have been shut away in the ghetto. I live here now. The world is separated from me and I’m separated from the world. Leaving the ghetto without a pass, is punishable by death.
Inside, there are only our people, close ones, dear ones. Outside, there are strangers. My soul is so very sad. My heart is seized with terror,”
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When you look up information on Anne Frank, the first thing you will see is that she is described as a German born or Dutch Diarist, as if she was a well established author or Journalist, but she wasn’t.
She was just a teenage girl who happened to write a diary, like so many other girls did in that time and probably still do. If she had been a teenager now, I am certain she would have been on Instagram. Snapchat, Facebook and other social media. She was a very bubbly girl who like to express herself.
Does this make her diary less valuable? No of course not, it makes it even more valuable because the diary was not written by a professional author but by a young girl who described her daily life , a life which so few can even fathom nowadays.
Her diary became her closest friend and ally. A tool to express her fear, boredom, and the struggles as a teenager growing up. On 16 March 1944, she wrote: “The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings, otherwise I’d absolutely suffocate.”
12 days later on March 28,1944 the exiled Dutch minister for education,Gerrit Bolkestein, gave a speech on Radio Orange where he appealed to listeners in the occupied Netherlands to record their everyday experiences on paper.
“If future generations are to realize to the full extent what we as a population are going through and what we are experiencing in this time of war, then it is clear that we will need simple documents: a diary, letters from a laborer forced to go to work in Germany, sermons spoken by a clergyman”.
Anne Frank, was one of the many who heard Bolkestein’s appeal at the time. That night she wrote about her housemates: “…of course, everyone rushed for my diary all at once”. She started to rework her diary and called it The Secret Annex.
Next week , June 12th will be Annelise Marie Frank’s 90th Birthday . I had planned to write a blog about Anne on that day, but I will be busy make a preparations for a trip I am taking with my teenage daughter.
Next time when you read about Anne Frank and you see her described as a German born or Dutch diarist please do not forget she was also just a teenage girl, who happened to have written a diary.
A teenage girl who still could be alive today, but her life was cut short by a brutal fascist regime. A regime which had no regard for life.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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History of Sorts 
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