the unhappiest, perhaps the most pitiful of all peoples in the whole world.
I hope for one thing only, and that is that this hatred of the Jews will be a passing thing, that the Dutch will show what they are after all, and that they will never totter and lose their sense of right. for anti-Semitism is unjust!
And if this terrible threat should actually come true, then the pitiful little collection of Jews that remain will have to leave Holland. We, too, shall have to move on again with our little bundles, and leave this beautiful country, which offered us such a warm welcome and which now turns its back on us.
I love Holland. I who, having no native country, had hoped that it might become my fatherland, and I still hope it will!
Yours, Anne
Thursday, 25 May, 1944
Dear Kitty, There’s something fresh every day. This morning our vegetable man was picked up for keeping two Jews in his house. It’s a great blow to us, not only that those poor Jews are again balancing on the edge of an abyss, but it’s terrible for the man himself.
The world has turned topsy-turvy, respectable people are being sent off to concentration camps, prisons, and lonely cells, and the dregs that remain govern young and old, rich and poor. One person falls prey through the black market, a second through helping the Jews or other people who’ve had to go underground; anyone who isn’t a member of the Nazis doesn’t know what may happen to him from one day to another.
This man is a great loss to us too. The girls can’t and aren’t allowed to haul along such a large quantity of potatoes, so the only thing to do is to eat
