days. Mummy took the opportunity of warning him about Mrs. van Daan, who, if he went on like this, could make things very disagreeable for him.
Mr. Dussel said that Mr. van Daan started the silence, so he was not going to be the one to break it.
Now I must tell you that yesterday was the sixteenth of November the day he had been exactly one year in the ‘Secret Annexe.’ Mummy received a plant in honour of the occasion, but Mrs. van Daan, who for weeks beforehand had made no bones about the fact that she thought Mr. Dussel should treat us to something, received nothing.
Instead of expressing, for the first time, his thanks for our unselfishness in taking him in, he didn’t say a word. And when I asked him, on the morning of the sixteenth, whether I should congratulate or condole, he answered that it didn’t matter to him. Mummy, who wanted to act as peacemaker, didn’t get one step further, and finally the situation remained as it was.
‘Der Mann hat einen grossen Geist Und ist so klein von Taten!’ (The spirit of the man is great. How puny are his deeds!)
Yours, Anne
Saturday, 27 November, 1943
Dear Kitty, Yesterday evening, before I fell asleep, who should suddenly appear before my eyes but Hanneli!
I saw her in front of me, clothed in rags, her face thin and worn. Her eyes were very big and she looked so sadly and reproachfully at me that I
could read in her eyes: “Oh Anne, why have you deserted me? Help, oh, help me, rescue me from this hell!”
And I cannot help her, I can only look on, how others suffer and die, and can only pray to God to send her back to us.
I just saw Hanneli, no one else, and now I understand. I misjudged her and was too young to understand her difficulties. She was attached to a new girl friend, and to her it seemed as though I wanted to take her away. What the poor girl must have felt like, I know, I know the feeling so well myself!
Sometimes, in a flash, I saw something of her life, but a moment later I was selfishly absorbed again in my own pleasures and problems. It was horrid of me to treat her as I did, and now she looked at me, oh so helplessly, with her pale face and imploring eyes. If only I could help her!
Oh God, that I should have all I could wish for and that she should be seized by such a terrible fate. I am not more virtuous than she; she, too, wanted to do what was right, why should I be chosen to live and she probably to die? What was the difference between us? Why are we so far from each other now?
Quite honestly, I haven’t thought about her for months, yes, almost for a year. Not completely forgotten her, but still I had never thought about her like this, until I saw her before me in all her misery.
Oh, Hanneli, I hope that, if you live until the end of the war, you will come back to us and that I shall be able to take you in and do something to make up for the wrong I did you.
But when I am able to help her again, then she will not need my help so badly as now. I wonder if she ever thinks of me, if so, what would she feel?
Good Lord, defend her, so that at least she is not alone. Oh, if only you could tell her that I think lovingly of her and with sympathy, perhaps that would give her greater endurance.
I must not go on thinking about it, because I won’t get any further. I only keep seeing her great big eyes, and cannot free myself from them. I wonder if Hanneli has real faith in God, and not only what has been thrust upon her?
I don’t even know, I never took the trouble to ask her!
