But then nothing.
Nothing follows but the sound of footsteps descending, and then nothing but silence. A ripple of relief passes through the room.
But in the aftermath it’s suggested by the fainter hearts among them that if the police ever did advance beyond the bookcase, Anne’s diary would be a bombshell primed to explode. It would betray not only those in hiding but those who have risked all to help them. Anne is appalled when even Pim admits to the logic of this fear, which only encourages Mr. van P. to declare that, for the sake of all, it should be burned.
Burned.
Anne feels something plummet inside her, but at the same time she stands up. She hears a hardness in her voice that surprises even her. “If my diary goes,” she declares, “I go, too.”
Silence.
And then it’s Mummy who speaks. Mummy of all people. “Never mind about that. Right now we should simply thank God,” she instructs. “Thank God we have been saved.”
7
THE FREEDOM OF SUNLIGHT
No one is spared. The sick, the elderly, children, babies and pregnant women—all are marched to their death. . . . And all because they’re Jews.
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 19 November 1942
“The Gestapo is here.”
—Victor Kugler, 4 August 1944
1944
The Achterhuis
Rear Annex of Prinsengracht 263
The Canal Ring
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
Twenty-five months in hiding
It is a Friday, the fourth of August. A warm and muggy day. The closed rooms smell of wood rot and stale air. Anne and Margot are working on an assignment from their mail-order shorthand course when the Grüne Polizei barge into their lives in the form of a mof sergeant and his gang of Dutch cohorts from the NSB. The Dutch detectives are dressed like civilians and carry their revolvers loose in their coat pockets, but the sergeant in charge is an Oberscharführer in the SS Sicherheitsdienst. He wears a uniform of hunter green with a leather peaked cap that sports a death’s-head. A Totenkopf. Anne keeps staring at it as he bellows his commands, the silvery skull over crossed bones. Is it staring back at her? Below the peak of his cap, the Oberscharführer has a sulky civil servant’s face with a pouty frown. But then, as it turns out, he is quite the generous spirit. He permits them a full hour to pack their pitiful onderduiker belongings instead of the regulation ten minutes, after he finds that Pim had been a reserve lieutenant in the previous war. “Good God, man. Why didn’t you come forward when you had the chance?” The Oberscharführer is mystified. It’s obvious that the small tin soldier inside him has come to attention in the presence of a superior officer. “They would have treated you well,” he insists. “You would have been sent to Theresienstadt with other Jews of worth.” The mof is bewildered. But Pim has no answer for him. How can he possibly?
* * *
• • •
In Anne’s memory the day will be broken into shards. Folding clothes into her backpack. Wrapping her toothbrush in a handkerchief with a sliver of soap. Picking up her curling iron, then putting it back down. Folding the brassiere that Margot had given her, tucking it modestly under a pair of woolen stockings. Helping pack a bit of food into a bag while silent tears glisten on her mother’s cheeks. The dreadful disbelief stamped on everyone’s face.
But then there is the sunshine. Walking out from two years in hiding into the summer brightness. It was such a surprise to feel warmth on her face so directly. For an instant she had simply enjoyed the freedom of sunlight before being loaded into the rear of a dark lorry.
8
BOULEVARD DES MISÈRES
Ten thousand have passed through this place, the clothed and the naked, the old and the young, the sick and the healthy—and I am left to live and work and stay cheerful.
—Etty Hillesum, letters written from Kamp Westerbork, 10 July 1943
One is certain only of death.
—Jewish proverb
1944
Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager
KAMP WESTERBORK
Drenthe Province
130 kilometers north of Amsterdam
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
Former Jewish refugee camp now under the control of the SS Security Police and SD
After their arrest on that hot day in the first week of August, they are confined in the cellar of the SD headquarters in the Euterpestraat, before being transported to the House of Detention I in the Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen. There they spend two terrible nights suffering from the stench of a polluted canal before being taken to Centraal Station under a Dutch police guard and boarded onto a scruffy passenger train with the shades closed and the windows nailed shut. The train bumps down the tracks of the Staatslijn C with the carloads of other captive Jews, branching off at Hooghalen to the final leg of track leading to the so-called Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager: the Jewish Transit Camp isolated in the mosquito-infested moorland of Drenthe Province.
This is Kamp Westerbork, a barbed-wire enclosure of more than a hundred barracks. Once it had been a refugee camp for young, unmarried German Jews pouring over the border to escape their Fatherland. But when the Nazi occupation began, the SS were delighted to find that such a facility had so conveniently been established for them in the Dutch lowlands, and with only a few alterations in the amenities, such as the electrification of the fencing, they transformed the camp from a refuge into a prison.
In a large hall filled with the clatter of typewriters, the Franks wait in one of many long queues. They have, at the moment, lost track of the van Pelses and Pfeffer, but the family is still together. Anne notices that after so long in hiding, their skin has turned as white as bleached flour from lack of sunlight. They have become living ghosts.
“Mother,” Margot suddenly announces, “you’re shivering.”
And so she is. Both Margot and Pim move to comfort her, but Edith takes a step away.
“Please don’t,” is all she can squeeze from her lips as she hugs herself, quaking, eyes boring into nothing. But she does not resist when Pim alone takes her into his embrace, and Anne is struck by a bolt of guilt. To see her mother so far from comfort, untouchable by her daughters. She cannot help but feel that she is responsible. How many times did Mummy try to get close to her, and how many times did Anne shove her away?
* * *
• • •
Their assignment vouchers are clear. The place where all eight of them are billeted is a barracks with its own barbed-wire enclosure, because all Jewish onderduikers are interred in the camp within the camp: the so-called S-Block. S for Straffe. The Punishment Barracks. Punishment for the crime of having tried to save themselves by going into hiding. Because, of course, in the eyes of the Grossdeutsches Reich, onderduiker Jews are criminal Jews. Criminal Jews are forced to wear red patches on their dungarees and rough wooden clogs instead of shoes. They are assigned to the dirtiest work details. Men have their heads shaved and dig latrines in labor Kommandos, while women are sent to Section XII to salvage depleted batteries, splitting them with a mallet and chisel. The battery tar sticks to Anne’s skin. The carbon bars turn her fingers a muddy red color. Everyone chokes on the chemical dust; the coughing is like an underrhythm to their work. But at least there are people to talk to and jokes to tell. Sand blows everywhere, driven by the moorland winds. It grits her teeth, and the mosquitoes leave welts the size of pennies, but the air is fresh and the sunlight unrationed. It is livable.
Except for Tuesdays.
There is a long, straight road that bisects Kamp Westerbork—the only paved road in the flat mud plain. The Jews call it the Boulevard des Misères, because of the stretch of graveled railbed that runs beside it. Every Saturday a train of boxcars enters the camp, between eight and eleven in the morning, and comes to a steaming halt on the track. And there it sits until Tuesday morning, waiting
to be filled with human freight. The metal signs bolted to the side of the boxcars tell the story:
WESTERBORK—AUSCHWITZ
AUSCHWITZ—WESTERBORK
Inside the barbed-wire boundaries of Westerbork, the Jews administer themselves. They police themselves. The Jewish Kommando charged with keeping order is known as the Ordnungsdienst, or more simply as the OD. They are often thuggish and brutal in their duties, these men, but luckily the head OD man for the S-Block has a reputation for decency, so Anne takes this as a good sign. Perhaps God is watching over them still.
Men and women are separated during the night. The Frank women share a three-tier bunk bed, with dirty burlap sacks filled with straw for mattresses. Mummy is still speechless most of the time. Numb, though she cried when a brute with a visored cap and the Magen David on his arm stole her wedding ring. It must have hurt her so much to lose that ring, and to think that it was another Jew who stole it from her!
One night after lights-out, Anne is struck by a nightmare even though she is still awake. Risking the abuse of their barracks elder, she slips out from the bottom bunk and presses her chin to the second tier, where her sister sleeps. A thin glow from the camp lamps seeps through the poorly mended shutters on the windows.
“Margot,” she whispers. She can feel needles of fear heating the back of her neck. It will mean some very bad trouble if she is caught out of her bunk. “Margot, wake up.” Anne prods her.
Margot does not move. She wakes without any kind of a start or surprise, her eyes simply open, reflecting a wet light. “What is it?” she hisses at Anne.
“Margot, I’m afraid Mummy and Pim are going to die,” Anne breathes.
Margot’s eyes widen enough to show that perhaps she, too, has had such a fear herself. “Anne . . .” she whispers.
“Promise me you’ll stay with me, Margot,” Anne begs her. “Promise me that whatever happens to us, you’ll stay with me. I couldn’t stand being alone any longer. I think I would die.”
“I promise,” Margot tells her, reaching out from under the dirty blanket and taking her sister’s hand. “I promise I will always stay with you, Anne. I will always stay with you.”
At that moment Anne loves Margot entirely. Loves her like she has never loved her before. Perhaps that makes it so much harder when the news comes. First as a rumor, then as a fact. There’s to be special transport. Not on Tuesday but this Sunday. And so, on the night of the second of September, their barracks elder makes the announcement to the entire population of the S-Block. “On the orders of the SS-Obersturmführer und Lagerkommandant, all inmates of Punishment Barracks, men and women without exception, will assemble for transport tomorrow.” Including Anne. Including Margot. Including Mummy and Pim and all the other former inhabitants of the Achterhuis.
Morning comes to the Boulevard des Misères. The OD Flying Column in their fluttering capes and brown coveralls are brusque but not exactly brutal, since it’s known that the Herr Kommandant prefers to keep things orderly. No panic. No violence, no untidiness. The Herr Kommandant is oh, so very humane, you see. Oh, so very handsome is the Herr Kommandant. Oh, so very polite. He ranges up and down the length of track in his immaculate SS uniform, trimly tailored, perfectly coiffed, confirming that all is in order. All is well. Assisting the elderly. Handing an infant up to a mother. Waving to the children. Anne sees their little faces, the children from the camp school, lined up by their teachers, loaded into the rail cars by the Ordedienst, cooperative and unafraid, like good little boys and girls.
When it’s their turn, two OD men lift Anne up like she is nothing, and she has the briefest sensation of weightlessness before she stumbles forward into the car. Margot is right behind her, and then Mummy, and then Pim, and then they are shoved deeper into the mass of people before the doors of the freight car are rolled shut and Anne hears the heavy, irrevocable clang of the lock.
Inside, she and Margot are huddled together, gripping each other’s hand. Only the narrowest cracks of light interrupt the darkness that encloses them all. A day earlier they were eating thin but edible broth with a short ration of hard-crusted brown bread. They were walking in the open air, absorbing the sunlight. The precious sunlight. But now they are all packed into this murky darkness. With so many sardined inside a freight car, the communal act of breathing takes on the low-pitched rhythm of a bellows. Mummy and Pim are trying to protect them with their bodies from the crush of people, though Mummy is whimpering, and not even Pim can comfort her. There’s a heavy rumbling noise. Metal clanks. The carriage lumbers forward, and Anne feels its sudden lurch in the pit of her belly. It grabs her like a hook, and a claw of utter, helpless terror snags her. The locomotive lets go with a high, mournful howl as it leaves the camp perimeters.
The journey will be hideous. No space, no air, no food, no place to use the toilet. The wailing. The stench of shit and vomit. The sobs and moans. A trainload of Jews rolling into the unknown horror. But in a gruesome way, Anne will treasure the memory. It will be the last time they are all together as a family. Pim, Mummy, Margot, and Anne. The last of the Franks.
Three days hence cars and cargo arrive at their destination, a converted cavalry garrison in the marshlands of southern Poland near a village that the Germans call Auschwitz.
9
A PRAYER
Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in bed and rest in You, O God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. Amen.
—Etty Hillesum, a prayer written in Auschwitz-Birkenau before her death in March 1943
1944
KL Auschwitz II
BIRKENAU
Frauenlager B1a
Barracks Block 29
GERMAN-ANNEXED POLAND
“Mummy.” Her sister is frantic. “Mummy, we’re going to die here, I know it!”
“Shut up, Margot,” Anne bites out, shivering against their mother’s body. “You can’t say that!”
“I can say it, because it’s true!” Margot shouts back, her anger raw and shredding, her face like a crumpled wad of paper.
“Quiet, girls, quiet,” their mother demands. The three of them are crammed in with seven others onto the bottom pallet of the hardwood koje that serves as their “bed,” so the matted layer of straw they lie upon reeks like a latrine, since shit and piss can only travel south. They are all starved to madness, and freezing, but in this nightmare Mummy might have found her true self. Anne is astonished by the transformation. She feels shamed by all the enmity that once divided them and is so grateful for even a thin shield of protection. Separated from Pim, her mother has become a different person, one whose every word and action seems to reflect the strength of her single purpose: keeping her daughters alive. And even though her body is a shrunken glove of yellow skin stretched over bones, she’s making them a promise. “We’re going to make it through this. We are.”
“But, Mummy,” Margot breathes, always the logical one, “how can you say that? How can you make such a promise? We’re a step below the lice here,” she says.
“Mummy, make her shut up!” Anne demands, firing her angriest look at her sister. “You heard what Mummy said! She said she is going to protect us!”
“Protect us from the cold, Anne? Protect us from dysentery? You think anyone can protect us from that? Stop being an idiot!”
“And you stop being a bitch!”
“Anne,” Mummy snaps at her.
“Well, she is a bitch, Mummy. She’s a stupid bitch!”
But suddenly her mother’s arm is wrapped around her with a tender power, enveloping her, as Anne hears her mother’s voice burrowing into her ear. “It’s all right, my child. My baby. It’s all right.” Rocking her so slowly. Whispering, “My baby, my little girl. I know you’r
e so angry. So very angry. And so very afraid. But we are here, and we are together, and we are alive. Both my girls are here with me and alive.” Shifting, she scoops her children into the circle of her arms. “Both of you are here with me and alive,” she says. “And for that I thank God. And I pray to him that he will protect you from the cold when I cannot. And that he will protect you from sickness when I cannot. And that he will guide us through this trial. I am so proud,” her mother whispers. “So proud of you girls. My beautiful Margot and my beautiful Anne. You are so strong. So very strong. And I know that God is watching over you. I know it. And that he will bless you and keep you whole.”
Anne can feel the tears chilling her eyes as she clutches her mother’s hand. “Amen, Mummy,” she weeps. “Amen.”
“Amen,” her sister weeps.
“Amen,” their mother whispers.
A prayer offered in the swamps of Poland.
In the cold of Barracks Block 29.
Frauenlager B1a.
Auschwitz II.
Birkenau.
10
HOPE
Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.
—Anne Frank,from her diary, 6 June 1944
And so I was standing there in the cold, and I was waiting. And then suddenly, I heard somebody calling me . . . and it was Anne.
—Hanneli “Lies” Pick-Goslar, recalling Bergen-Belsen in Anne Frank Remembered, a documentary
Annelies Page 9