“I don’t hate you.”
Little Bit folded her arms. “There has to be a catch:”
“There is.”
I knew it.”
“Little Bit, tell me one thing you want from me more than anything else in the world. I’ll do it and throw the earrings in for free, if you do one thing for me.”
“What?”
“Come somewhere with me for a couple of hours.”
Little Bit looked skeptical. “That’s it? That’s all?”
“That’s all. Name the one thing you most want from me.”
Little Bit bit her lip. “You can’t laugh. Promise.”
“I promise.”
“What I want is for you to call me Elizabeth.”
How could I not have realized it meant so much to her? “Elizabeth,” I said. “All right, Elizabeth. Let’s go.”
A half-hour later, Elizabeth stared out the window as our bus stopped at a light. “How much farther, Nicole?”
“A little ways.”
“Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?”
Instead of answering, I said, “ ‘I never utter my real feelings about anything.’ ”
Elizabeth looked confused. “You don’t?”
“ ‘My lighter, superficial side will always be too quick for the deeper side of me, and that’s why it always wins.’ ”
Elizabeth made a face. “You are acting very weird and I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I didn’t say it. A friend did. I was quoting her.”
“Quoting who?”
“ ‘That’s the difficulty in these times: Ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered,’” I quoted again.
“Your friend said that?” Elizabeth looked thoughtful.
“There’s more. Actually, she didn’t say it, she wrote it. It’s from her diary.” I pulled Elizabeth’s book report on Anne Frank’s diary out of my pocket.
She looked embarrassed. “I didn’t really read the whole thing,” she admitted. “Are you mad I used your computer?”
“No. But I’m mad about what you wrote in this book report, when you didn’t know what you were talking about.”
“But that expert guy on the Internet said—”
“Anyone can call themselves an expert, Elizabeth. He’s a liar. Anne Frank wrote every word of her diary. When we get back home, I’ll show you the real proof.”
“Okay.”
I put my arm around her, Burb Girl in Training, currently hurtling down the highway toward Heatherville or Chrissyland or someplace I did not want her to end up. But maybe she could go a different way, end up someplace else entirely, if only I cared enough to try to show her how.
Ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.
Maybe not shattered. I turned to my sister. “This is important, Elizabeth. We could have been in the Holocaust. You and me. Anne Frank could have been a friend of ours. Do you understand that?”
She looked up at me, her face more solemn than I had ever seen it before. And she nodded.
I nodded back. “Before we get to the exhibit, I’ll tell you a little about Anne, okay? How she became a famous writer, and broke a million hearts.”
TIME LINE OF ACTUAL EVENTS
Many historical facts and real figures from the past are woven into this
work of fiction. The authors have taken care to reflect that history as
accurately as possible while bringing Nicole’s journey to life.
1929
12 June · Anne Frank born, Frankfurt, Germany
1933
30 January. Adolf Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany
5 December. Anne Frank’s family moves to Amsterdam, Holland
1934
19 August. 90 percent of German voters approve dictatorial powers for Hitler
1935
15 September · German Nuremberg race laws against Jews decreed
1938
12 March. German troops enter Austria
24 April. Germany orders all Jews to register wealth and property
23 July. All German Jews over the age of fifteen must have identity cards
9-10 November. Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) Mobs attack synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany
1939
15 March. German troops seize Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia)
1 September. Germany invades Poland
3 September. France and Great Britain both declare war on Germany; United States stays neutral
1940
10 May. Germany invades Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium
12 May. Germany invades France
14 June. Paris occupied by German troops
18 June. Hitler tours Occupied Paris. Charles de Gaulle gives BBC radio address calling for continued resistance against the Nazis
22 June · German-French armistice signed. A portion of southern France remains under nominal French control with seat of government at Vichy
October. French Statut des Juifs, a wide array of anti-Jewish laws, goes into effect
1941
16 May. Marshal Pétain approves collaboration with Nazis
22 June · Germany breaks treaty with Russia and invades that nation
22 July · French law permits confiscation of Jewish property
10 September. Nazi posters go up in Paris threatening that 50-100 French hostages will be shot for every German soldier killed by the Resistance
7 December · Japan attacks United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. United States declares war on Japan on 8 December
11 December · Germany declares war on United States; United States responds with declaration of war on Germany
1942
20 January. Decision for total extermination of Europe’s Jews made at Wannsee Conference in Germany
27 March. First deportation leaves Drancy for Auschwitz, dozens follow through July 1944
7 June · Yellow star regulation goes into effect in Paris
6 July. Anne Frank and her family go into hiding at 263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, the Secret Annex
16-17 July. Vélodrome d‘Hiver roundup of more than 12,000 foreign Jews in Paris
11 November. German troops occupy all of France in response to Allied invasion of North Africa
1943
31 January. French fascist militias, including the Permilleux Service, created February. STO goes into effect, drafting French men to work in Germany
2 July · Alois Brunner assumes administration of Drancy detention camp
1944
6 June. D-Day, Allies invade Europe at Normandy, France
10 June. Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, 642 people murdered by Nazi SS
12 June. Anne Frank turns fifteen years old
31 July · Final official transport from Drancy
4 August. Anne Frank and family arrested in the Secret Annex
9 August. German army begins to withdraw from Paris
17 August. Brunner deports fifty-one prisoners from Drancy to Buchenwald in one final railway car attached to a German troop train, including Armand Kohn, chief administrator of the Rothschild Hospital, and his family. Escapees from this transport include Philippe and Rose-Marie Kohn
18 August. 1,500 prisoners at Drancy liberated by Allied troops
23 August. Paris liberated by American, British, Canadian, and Free French troops
September. Armand Kohn’s youngest son, Georges-André Kohn, twelve, transferred to Auschwitz
3 September. Anne Frank and family deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau
5 September. Anne and family arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau
28 October. Anne and her sister, Margot, are transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany
12 November. Georges-André Kohn transferred to Neuengamme camp, near Hamburg, Germany, to be used in horrific me
dical experiments, including being injected with tuberculosis
1945
6 January. Edith Frank, Anne’s mother, dies of starvation at Auschwitz
27 January. Auschwitz is liberated by Russian troops. Otto Frank survives
March. Margot and Anne Frank both die of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. (Peter Van Pels died at Mauthausen concentration camp.)
20 April · With British troops no more than three miles away, Georges-André Kohn and the twenty other children at Neuengamme are murdered by injection of fatal doses of morphine
8 May. V-E Day, Nazi Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies
1947 · First edition of Anne Frank’s diary published by Otto Frank in Holland
1985 · Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation completes extensive scientific study authenticating Anne Frank’s diary
1988 · Alois Brunner, commandant of Drancy camp, confirmed alive in Syria
1995-Present · Holocaust denial web sites proliferate on Internet
The total number of Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators is estimated at no less than 5.2 million and as many as 6 million, representing two-thirds of all Jews alive in Europe at the beginning of the war. Of the approximately 300,000 Jews on French soil at the outbreak of the war, 76,000 were murdered.
FURTHER TIME LINE SOURCES;
britannica.com
uen.org
thehistoryplace.com
The Simon Wiesenthal Center
Bryce-Jones, Robert. Paris Under the Occupation. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
Dank, Milton. The French Against the French. New York: Lippencott, 1974.
Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989.
Klarsfeld, Serge. French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial. New York: New York University Press, 1996.
Klarsfeld, Serge. Le Memorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France. Paris: Klarsfeld, 1978.
Muller, Melissa. Anne Frank: The Biography. New York: Henry Holt, 998.
Rozett, Robert. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 2. Edited by Israel Gutman. New York: Macmillan, 1989.
Weisberg, Richard H., and Michael R. Marrus. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: New York University Press, 1996
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