In Continuum.

A Letter to Anne

Dearest Anne,

I have heard of your name ever since my school days.It must be quite a shock for you to know that your diary has been published into a dozen different languages all around the world,and considered a definitive book when it comes to the lives of Jews during the World War II and the Holocaust.Miep and Bep found your diary scattered around the Secret Annex after your family was arrested by the German police.I'm sorry to tell you that no one in your family survived the Holocaust,save for your father Otto Frank.I read that you died from typhus shortly after Margot,your sister,and to think that you suffered such a death after that brilliant work you have done in your diary,it made my experience reading your book even more heart wrenching.

All thanks to your father whom you loved so dear,he published your diary as you wished and i have it on my table now,with your picture printed on the cover.It is called "The Diary of a Young Girl",and the picture was taken from a class photograph you took when you were probably fourteen,or younger.You probably dont remember now,but that classroom still stands in Amsterdam now.In fact,certain contents of your diary is painted on the walls of your school now,and students still attend your school there,acknowledging your brilliance everyday.

I dont know if i am capable of understanding the live in the Secret Annex.As you have mentioned in your diary sometime in March of 1944,you mentioned that despite all the descriptions that you have given of the Secret Annex,it is still impossible for the readers to fully understand the circumstances that you were in.I love the quote you wrote in German in one of the entries that goes,"Himmelhoch jauchzend, zu Tode betrubt",and i guess in a way that summed up your life in there,didnt it?On one hand,it was the haven for yourself and the rest of the residence,but at the same time it was like a cage,and you were the bird with your wings clipped off and freedom restrained.I am in the army now,only a little more than a month till i am out of it.I dont think i qualify as a "soldier",at least not the kind of soldier you would imagine me to be.But like i said before,i guess i can only imagine how it felt like,trapped in the back of the bookcase for more than two years.I've been in this 'cage' of mine for almost a year now,and the way the barbwires twisted and turned above the fences in the perimeters of the fences pierced me whenever i looked at them.Like you,i so desperately wanted to escape the hands of these people,so thirsty and hungry for freedom.But what choice do i have?What choice did you have?

It was strange reading your diary.On one hand i know it was only meant for you and Kitty,but on the other hand i understand that you meant for it to be published after the wars.But reading those intimate details about you made me feel so sorry for you,your family,and for some reason,myself.I imagined your smile with those dimples when you recieved the diary as your birthday present,and i imagined the way you rushed down the stairs after Peter kissed you through your hair for the first time.I imagined you,sitting next to him arm in arm before the attic window in the shadows and saying nothing at all.I imagined,you smiling throughout the book,but a part of me understands that at the very end,on August 3rd,you will be taken away and ultimately die in Poland.I wonder how it would be like,if you kept your diary with your throughout the three day journey by train.I wonder how much more depressing your entries would be,if you kept on writing and writing.It was strange,to know that the cheerful girl in this entry,the girl smiling from her first kiss in that other entry,is going to die in a hundred pages' time and right then when she wrote it,she was so innocent and so clueless as to her eventual fate.And it kills me,it really did.

I just finished the part about you wanting to be a writer.I remember myself wanting to be a writer when i was your age.I doubt you have heard of J.R.R Tolkien,who wrote The Lord of the Rings in 1955,ten years after you died.It went on to be the second most read book in human history,losing only to the Holy Bible.You were interested in fantasy novels i see,and i too tried my hands on fantasy novels when i was still a student.But like you i found it hard to continue after certain parts of the writing process,and doubted the possibility of the greatness of my work.I didnt doubt my talents,but the acceptibility of my works.I related so much to the way you expressed your doubts to Kitty,and admired your determination to break away from the life your mother Edith led and create a life all by yourself,through your words and imaginations.

Your relationship with Peter made me smile,even when i was sitting in the cafe drinking a cup of coffee this afternoon.Not because you were so childish and embarrassed by Peter's sudden showcase of affections,but because the level of innocence in that kiss reminded me of what we've all lost through growing up,how the simplest joys have been forgotten,and taken for granted.In that little space behind the bookcase in the Secret Annex,your love with Peter was so great and yet,so secretive even to the rest of your family.Even during the times of suffering,constantly watching your footsteps so that the people at Keg's wouldnt hear them,or the timings to flush the toilet,despite all of those,the very basis of human emotions still exists,in that quiet attic before the window: Love.

Mr. Kugler,Mr. Kleiman,Miep,Bep and your father survived the war.It ended shortly after your death on 4th of May 1945 in Netherlands,where you lived.Hitler shot himself with a pistol,Mussolini was executed along with his mistress,and their bodies hung upside down in Milan for public display.62 million people died in the war,which translates to about 2.5% of the world's population.6 million Jews were killed as well,alongside 37 million other civilians.But amidst the horrors of the war,there was hope still.A man named Oskar Schindler's,a member of the Nazi party in Poland,saved 1200 Jews by hiring them to work in his factory,buying them over from concentration camps.Wladyslaw Szpilman,a famous pianist in Poland,survived the war on his passion for music and the will to live,hiding in hospitals and attics,alone.There were hopes,and there were survival,even amidst all the killings and sufferings throughout the world.

It's so tragic to know that you,of all people,went through such an ordeal,and didnt have your diary with you.You wished to confide everything to her,to Kitty,and yet i wonder during your days in the camps,who it was that you confided everything to.You inspired so many in the world to start writing a diary,and like myself now i am following your footsteps,reading back at old entries and laughing at my stupidity and my foolishness.But at the very foundation of the laughter,is the desperation to express ourselves,to have a medium to tell our stories,even if it means that nobody is ever going to read them.Because words written are sorrows removed,and it works better than tears,better and so much more.

There is a stone erected Bergen-Belsen for yourself and Margot,and with that hundreds of flowers and pictures of you.People were touched by you,people were moved by your words.People's lives were changed,and others were affected by the way the war reflected through your eyes,and the way that translated into words upon your diary.You were murdered,and you went through so much before your death.I wonder if you still believed in what you said,that there is still good in the hearts of men.But i am here to tell you,that there is good in the hearts of men,despite the atrocities.

So here i am,sixty-one years after your death,writing a letter to you.I'm not even done with your book,and i am already moved to tears by you.For just a second,as i took a bus home from town just now,i had a strange thought.The thought,is that despite the death of you,despite everything that you went through,you are very much alive,even till today.About forty years after you death a comic called V for Vendetta was written by a brilliant writer called Alan Moore.And in the comic,the hero V mentioned once,that beneath the mask he wears there is an idea,and ideas are bulletproof.

You,Anne Frank,you are bulletproof as well.You succumbed to typhus and buried in the mass graves,but you live on in the hearts and mind of millions,and i hope in the Kingdom of Heaven you find peace within your heart,in the arms of Peter who mustve joined you,and the love from your loved ones,you so desperately desired.