Dear Kitty, Such quarrels that the whole house thunders! Mummy and I, the van Daans and Daddy, Mummy and Mrs. van Daan, everyone is angry with everyone else. Nice atmosphere, isn’t it? Anne’s usual list of failings has been brought out again and fully ventilated.
Mr. Voskuijl is already in the Binnengasthuis hospital. Mr. Kleiman is up again, the hemorrhage having stopped sooner than usual. He told us that the Registrars Office received additional damage from the Fire Service who, instead of just quenching the flames, soaked the whole place with water. I’m glad!
The Carlton Hotel is smashed to bits. Two British planes loaded with incendiary bombs fell right on top of the ‘Offiziersheim.’ The whole Vijzelstraat-Singel corner is burned down. The air raids on German towns are growing in strength every day. We don’t have a single quiet night. I’ve got dark rings under my eyes from lack of sleep. Our food is miserable. Dry bread and coffee substitute for breakfast. Dinner: spinach or lettuce for a fortnight on end. Potatoes twenty centimetres long and tasting sweet and rotten. Whoever wants to follow a slimming course should stay in the ‘Secret Annexe’! They complain bitterly upstairs, but we don’t regard it as such a tragedy. All the men who fought in 1940 or were mobilised have been called up to work for ‘der Führer’ as prisoners of war. Suppose they’re doing that as a precaution against invasion.
Yours, Anne
Saturday, 1 May, 1943
Dear Kitty, If I just think of how we live here, I usually come to the conclusion that it is paradise compared with how other Jews who are not in hiding must be
