Mummy is sad, because she does really love me, while I’m not in the least bit sad, because I don’t think she understands. And Peter—I don’t want to give Peter up, he’s such a darling. I admire him so, it can grow into something beautiful between us, why do the ‘old ‘uns’ have to poke their noses in all the time? Luckily I’m quite used to hiding my feelings and I manage extremely well not to let them see how mad I am about him. Will he ever say anything? Will I ever feel his cheek against mine, like I felt Petel’s cheek in my dream? Oh, Peter and Petel, you are one and the same!
They don’t understand us, won’t they ever grasp that we are happy, just sitting together and not saying a word. They don’t understand what has driven us together like this. Oh, when will all these difficulties be overcome? And yet it is good to overcome them, because then the end will be all the more wonderful. When he Hanneli with his head on his arm with his eyes closed, then he is still a child; when he plays with Boche, he is loving; when he carries potatoes or anything heavy, then he is strong; when he goes and watches the shooting, or looks for burglars in the darkness, then he is brave; and when he is so awkward and clumsy, then he is just a pet.
I like it much better if he explains something to me than when I have to teach him; I would really adore him to be my superior in almost everything.
What do we care about the two mothers? Oh, but if only he would speak!
Yours, Anne
Wednesday, 29 March, 1944
Dear Kitty, Bolkestein, an M.P. was speaking on the Dutch News from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine
how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the ‘Secret Annexe.’ The title I alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.
But seriously, it would seem quite funny ten years after the war if we Jews were to tell how we lived and what we ate and talked about here.
Although I tell you a lot, still, even so, you only know very little of our lives. How scared the ladies are during the air raids. For instance, on Sunday, when 350 British planes dropped half a million kilos of bombs on Ijmuiden, how the houses trembled like a wisp of grass in the wind, and who knows how many epidemics now rage.
You don’t know anything about all these things, and I would need to keep on writing the whole day if I were to tell you everything in detail.
People have to line up for vegetables and all kinds of other things; doctors are unable to visit the sick, because if they turn their backs on their cars for a moment, they are stolen; burglaries and thefts abound, so much so that you wonder what has taken hold of the Dutch for them suddenly to have become such thieves. Little children of eight and eleven years break the windows of people’s homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on.
No one dares to leave his house unoccupied for five minutes, because if you go, your things go too. Every day there are announcements in the newspapers offering rewards for the return of lost property, typewriters, Persian rugs, electric clocks, cloth, etc. Electric clocks in the streets are dismantled, public telephones are pulled to pieces, down to the last thread.
Morale among the Dutch can’t be good, the weekly rations are not enough to last for two days except the coffee substitute. The invasion is a long time coming, and the men have to go to Germany. The children are ill or malnourished, everyone is wearing old clothes and old shoes. A new sole costs 7.50 guilders in the black market; moreover, hardly any of the shoemakers will accept shoe repairs or, if they do, you have to wait months, during which time the shoes often disappear.
There’s one good thing in the midst of it all, which is that as the food gets worse and the measures against the people more severe, sabotage against the authorities steadily increases. The people in the food offices, the
