I shudder when I recall the dull droning rumble in the distance, which for us marked the approaching destruction.
Yours, Anne
Friday, 23 July, 1943
Dear Kitty, Just for fun I’m going to tell you each person’s first wish, when we are allowed to go outside again. Margot and Mr. van Daan long more than anything for a hot overflowing bath and want to stay in it for half an hour.
Mrs. van Daan wants most to go and eat cream cakes immediately. Mr.
Dussel thinks of nothing but seeing Lotje, his wife; Mummy, of her cup of coffee; Daddy is going to visit Mr. Voskuijl first; Peter, the town and a cinema, while I should find it so blissful, I shouldn’t know where to start!
But most of all, I long for a home of our own, to be able to move freely and to have some help with my work again at last, in other words—school.
Bep has offered to get us some fruit. It supposedly costs next to nothing (grapes 2.50 guilders a pound, gooseberries 70 cents a pound, one peach 50 cents, melons 75 cents a pound.) Then you see in the newspapers every evening in bold letters, “Play Fair and keep prices down”!
Yours, Anne
Monday, 26 July, 1943
Dear Kitty,
Nothing but tumult and uproar yesterday, we are still very het up about it all. You might really ask, does, a day go by without some excitement?
We had the first warning siren while we were at breakfast, but we don’t give a hoot about that, it only means that the planes are crossing the coast.
After breakfast I went and lay down for an hour as I had a bad headache, then I went downstairs. It was about 2 o’clock. Margot had finished her office work at half past two; she had not packed her things together when the sirens began to wail, so upstairs I went again with her. It was high time, for we had not been upstairs five minutes when they began shooting hard, so much so that we went and stood in the passage. And yes, the house rumbled and shook, and down came the bombs.
I clasped my ‘escape bag’ close to me, more because I wanted to have something to hold rather than with the idea of escaping, because there’s nowhere we can go. If ever we come to the extremity of fleeing from here, the street would be just as dangerous as an air raid. This one subsided after half an hour, but the activity in the house increased. Peter came down from his lookout post in the attic, Mr. Dussel was in the main office, Mrs. van Daan felt safe in the private office, Mr. van Daan had been watching from the loft, and we on the little landing dispersed ourselves too: I went upstairs to see rising above the harbour the columns of smoke Mr. van Daan had told us about. Before long you could smell burning, and outside it looked as if a thick mist hung everywhere. Although such a big fire is not a pleasant sight, luckily for us it was all over, and we went about our respective tasks.
That evening at dinner; another air-raid alarm! It was a nice meal, but my hunger vanished, simply at the sound of the alarm. Nothing happened and three quarters of an hour later it was all clear. The dishes were stacked ready to be done: air-raid warning, ack-ack fire, an awful lot of planes. “Oh, dear, twice in one day, that’s too much,” we all thought, but that didn’t help at all. Once again the bombs rained down, the other side this time, on Schiphol, according to the British. The planes dived and climbed, we heard the hum of their engines and it was very gruesome. Each moment I thought: “One’s falling now. Here it comes.”
