Anne Frank's Tales From the Secret Annex Read online

  ‘I’ve been coming here every day, you sleepyhead. You were never awake.’

  ‘I know. Nurse Ank said hello for you.’

  Mother and daughter had little to say to each other.

  Cady asked about all her friends and neighbours, then the conversation began to flag. After half an hour, Mrs van Altenhoven leaned over and gave Cady a kiss. ‘Bye-bye, I’ll see you tomorrow!’ And she sailed out of the door. Cady’s mother was not beautiful, though she did have an intelligent and determined face. Her long pointed nose and penetrating brown eyes gave her face a certain coldness, and when she fixed her gaze on someone, there was an unpleasant expression in them. But when she smiled, you could see a row of fine teeth, and then it no longer occurred to anyone to think of her face as cold. Cady had never given much thought to what her mother looked like, but she now noticed that her mother tended to waggle like a goose when she walked. Never in a thousand years would she have made the comparison with her mother’s face, but she couldn’t help chuckling and chiding herself for calling her mother a goose.

  On the other hand, in the evenings, when it was visiting time, Cady was never sleepy. She waited impatiently in her bed for her father, who never neglected to bring her something – a bunch of tulips or a bit of fruit – even if it was just something small. Cady adored these little gifts. The moment the door opened and Mr van Altenhoven came in, Cady’s eyes lit up, and he was always allowed to stay longer than her mother.

  Cady’s father was a calm, good-looking man with a thick head of grey hair and blue eyes, which made everyone who looked at him feel happy and warm. His gaze also worked like a magic potion on Cady. She and her father could sit quietly for hours, not saying a word, simply happy to be together.

  Nurse Ank, the nurse who took care of Cady, always wore a look of gratitude when she saw this kindly man, who came every day, without fail, to cheer up his daughter.

  She didn’t have the slightest bit of trouble with her little patient. Cady, who must have been in a great deal of pain, especially when she was being examined by the doctor, never complained. On the contrary, she was happy with everything.

  Cady’s Life: Fragment

  IT HAPPENED JUST as Nurse Ank said it would. On Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, Cady’s first youthful visitor arrived. A tall girl, not at all pretty, but with a pleasant, cheerful face, asked at the desk for Caroline Dorothea van Altenhoven.

  ‘Oh, you must mean that nice girl they call Cady. She’s in Room 4, third door on the right.’

  Cady had won the heart of the receptionist when she gave orders for a box of chocolates, which someone had given her, to be distributed throughout the hospital, so that the nurses and any of the patients allowed to eat them were given two chocolates each. As a result, even people Cady had never met referred to her as ‘that nice girl, Cady’.

  Meanwhile, the visitor walked down to Room 4 and knocked. Nurse Ank opened the door and said, ‘You must be Greet. Come in.’

  ‘Hello, Greet. Don’t look so scared, I’m still in one piece!’ Cady was overjoyed to see someone besides those grave-faced nurses for a change.

  ‘Well, Cady, how do you feel?’ Greet was noticeably embarrassed, so Nurse Ank, who was hoping she’d be a little more lively, left the room.

  Later, on her way back, she heard peals of laughter from down the hall. She quickly opened the door and said, ‘Shh, keep it down a bit, girls.’

  ‘Oh, Nurse, I practically split my sides. You should hear what they’ve been up to at school. Such a shame I had to miss it.’ And she told the story, down to the last juicy detail, to Nurse Ank.

  When Greet left at three-thirty, Cady was exhausted but happy to have had a visitor, and that was the main thing, since there was plenty of time to sleep.

  In general, however, the weeks went by fairly monotonously.

  Cady’s Life: Fragment

  ON 3 SEPTEMBER the peace and quiet in the sanatorium was disrupted for the first time since Cady’s arrival.

  At one in the afternoon, when she happened to be listening to the news on her earphones, she was horrified to hear the ANP* begin its broadcast by reading Chamberlain’s declaration of war on Germany. Cady had never been interested in politics, which is not surprising for a fourteen-year-old girl, and she wasn’t the least bit moved by events taking place in faraway places. But she vaguely suspected that this declaration of war was somehow going to affect her too. When the rest hour was over, the nurse handed out the tea and told the other patients the news.

  In Cady’s ward, there were only patients who were well on the way to recovery. The day before the war broke out, a new woman had arrived and had been assigned the bed next to Cady’s. Except for ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’, Cady hadn’t yet exchanged a word with this woman, but now they naturally began to talk. After the nurse’s announcement, there had been exclamations of shock all over the room. Only the woman next to Cady had remained silent.

  Cady couldn’t help but notice. Nor could she ignore the tears that were soon streaming down the rather young-looking face and making it appear thoroughly sad and miserable. She didn’t dare ask anything, for fear of disturbing her neighbour, who was wrapped up in her own thoughts. A little later in the day, Cady was reading when she heard sobs coming from the next bed. She quickly laid her book on her bedside table and gently inquired, ‘Shall I call the nurse? Aren’t you feeling well?’

  The woman looked up. Her face was streaked with tears. She observed Cady for a moment, then said, ‘No, my dear. Don’t bother. No nurse and no medicine can ease my pain.’

  This made Cady feel even sorrier for her. The poor woman looked so gloomy and dejected that she couldn’t leave it at that. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  The woman, who had slumped back into her pillows, sat up again, dried her eyes with her handkerchief and this time gave Cady a friendly look. ‘I can see you’re not asking out of mere curiosity. Even though you’re very young, I’ll tell you what’s making me so sad.’ Her voice broke, she glanced around with unseeing eyes, then continued. ‘My son… I’m worried about my son. He’s at a boarding school in England and was due home next month. But now…’

  She was so overcome with sobs that she couldn’t finish her sentence, so Cady filled in the rest: ‘Now he won’t be able to come home?’

  She received a faint nod in reply. ‘Who knows how long the war will last or what will happen over there. I don’t believe all that talk about it being over in a couple of months. Wars always last longer than people think.’

  ‘But at the moment they’re only fighting in Poland, aren’t they? You mustn’t be so afraid. After all, your son is being taken care of.’ Cady knew nothing about the boy, she had just wanted to respond in some way to the disheartened reply from the next bed.

  But the woman apparently wasn’t listening, for she said, ‘After every war, people always say, “Never again, this was so terrible that we must do whatever it takes to avoid a repetition.” But they always end up fighting again. People will never change. As long as they live and breathe, they’ll always quarrel, and when there’s peace, they’ll go looking for something to quarrel about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been through a war, but… we’re not at war yet. So far we haven’t got involved. Of course what you just told me about your son is unfortunate, though I’m sure you’ll be reunited with him after the war. But wait a moment… Why can’t your son come here? They haven’t stopped all the boats between Holland and England, have they? Why don’t you ask the doctor? He’s sure to know. If your son leaves right away, he can still come home.’

  Never before had Cady seen a face change so dramatically from one minute to the next. ‘Do you really think so? That hadn’t occurred to me. Oh, here comes the nurse, I’ll ask her.’

  Cady and her neighbour beckoned the approaching nurse and she came over.

  ‘Nurse,’ the woman asked, ‘do you know if they’ve stopped the boats between Holland and England?’


  ‘They certainly haven’t. Are you thinking about going to England?’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s not why I asked. Thank you very much, Nurse.’

  After casting another grateful glance at Cady, the woman turned away and began making plans to write to her son.

  * Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau – the Dutch press agency.

  Cadys Life: Continued

  MEANWHILE, FOR THE Jewish population life was rapidly going downhill. In 1942 the fate of many Jews hung in the balance. In July the Germans started sending call-up notices to sixteen-year-old girls and boys and taking them away. Luckily, they seemed to have overlooked Cady’s friend Mary. Later, it wasn’t just young people who had to go, but everyone. Throughout the autumn and winter, Cady saw the most terrible things. Night after night the streets were filled with the sound of roaring lorries, screaming children and banging doors. Beneath the lamp, Mr and Mrs van Altenhoven and Cady looked at each other, and in their eyes was the question, ‘Who will be gone in the morning?’

  One evening in December, Cady decided to visit Mary, in the hope of taking her friend’s mind off things for a while. That evening, the streets were in a worse turmoil than ever. Cady had to ring the bell to the Hopkenses’ three times and assure Mary, who peeked cautiously out of the window, that it was safe to open the door. Mary led her in to where the whole family was sitting around, metaphorically kitted out in sports togs with rucksacks on their backs, simply waiting. They were pale, and didn’t say a word when Cady entered the room. Had they been sitting like this every night for months? Seeing all those pale and frightened faces was awful. With each bang of an outside door, a shock went through everyone in the room, as if the door to life itself were symbolically being slammed shut.

  Cady left at ten o’clock. There was no point in staying, since she could neither help these people, who already seemed to be in another world, nor take their minds off their troubles. The only one who was functioning at all was Mary. She nodded at Cady from time to time and tried with all her might to get her parents and sisters to eat something.

  Mary walked her to the door and bolted it behind her. Cady set off towards home with her torch in her hand. Before she’d even gone five steps, she stopped and listened. From around the corner she could hear the thud of boots, as if an entire regiment of soldiers was coming her way. It was impossible to make out anything in the darkness, but Cady knew all too well who belonged to the boots and what it meant. She flattened herself against a wall, switched off her torch and hoped the men wouldn’t see her. Suddenly, however, a man holding a revolver came to a halt in front of her. He stared at her with steely eyes and a grim expression on his face. ‘Mitgeben,’* was all he said, and immediately someone grabbed her and started to lead her away.

  ‘I’m a Christian girl from a decent family!’ she dared to say. She was trembling from head to foot and wondering what this sinister man was planning to do with her. Despite the risk, she had to get him to look at her identity card.

  ‘Was ehrbar, zeig dein Beweis.’*

  Cady took it out of her pocket.

  ‘Warum hast du das nicht gleich gesagt,’† said the man as he inspected it. ‘So ein Lumpenpack,’‡ he added.

  And before she knew it, she was lying sprawled out on the street. The German, angry at his mistake, had given the ‘decent Christian girl’ a vicious kick. Ignoring her pain and everything else, Cady picked herself up and hurried home.

  After that night, a week went by before Cady had a chance to visit Mary again. But one afternoon she made the time, deciding not to worry about her homework or other engagements. Even before she arrived at the Hopkenses’, she had a feeling she wouldn’t find Mary at home, and sure enough, when she got there, the door was sealed.

  A terrible feeling of despair came over Cady. ‘Who knows where Mary is now?’ she thought. She turned on her heel and went home. Once there, she ran to her room, slammed the door, threw herself on the divan with her coat still on and thought about Mary, only Mary.

  Why did Mary have to go while she was allowed to stay? Why did Mary have to suffer this awful fate while she was free to enjoy herself? What was the difference between them? Was she any better than Mary? Weren’t the two of them just the same? What crime had Mary ever committed? Oh, this had to be the most terrible injustice. Suddenly she saw Mary’s frail figure before her, locked up in a cell, dressed in rags, with a sunken, emaciated face. Her eyes had become huge, and she was looking at Cady with such sorrow and reproach. Cady could stand it no longer. She fell to her knees and cried, cried so hard that her body shook with sobs. Mary’s eyes kept staring at her, begging her for help, help that Cady knew she couldn’t give.

  ‘Forgive me, Mary. Come back…’

  Cady no longer knew what to say or think. There were no words to describe the suffering she could so clearly see before her. Doors kept slamming over and over again in her ears, she could hear the crying children, she could see a squad of crude, armed men, like the one who had tossed her into the mud, and in their midst, helpless and alone, was Mary, Mary who was just the same as she was.

  * ‘Come with me.’

  * ‘What do you mean, decent? Show me your ID.’

  † ‘Why didn’t you say so right away?’

  ‡ ‘Such a shabby-looking girl.’

  Afterword

  On 25 June 1947, Otto Frank wrote a single word in his day book: ‘Boek’ signified the publication date of the very first edition of his daughter Anne’s diary, entitled Het Achterhuis (The Back House) and printed in a small run of just 1,500 copies to gauge public response.

  Since that first publication, nearly 40 million copies of Anne’s diary have been published in 70 languages. Interest in Anne Frank doesn’t seem to wane. In March 2010 readers of the Daily Mirror, in an online poll carried out to mark the centenary of International Women’s Day, voted Anne Frank the most inspirational and influential woman of the last 100 years, coming way ahead of such luminaries as Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and Emmeline Pankhurst.

  Anne was certainly not the saintly figure of her portrayal in some of the more sentimentalized, dramatic interpretations that have appeared over the decades. She was a real teenager, lashing out in frustration at the failings – as she perceived them – of the adults hiding with her. However, she certainly developed a strong moral code and maturity during her years of hiding, demonstrated perhaps most clearly within these pages in the story Give!

  The lasting interest and inspiration of Anne Frank’s diary is due not only to the continuing relevance of her writing, expressing the hopes, fears and concerns of a child entering the turbulent world of adolescence, but also of the vision and tenacity of a loving father, Otto Frank, who, despite having come through the hell of Auschwitz, was determined that his daughter’s diary should be used as a ‘force for good’.

  Reading Anne’s diary and her stories, and learning about her life, all help young people to understand what it feels like to be the victim of irrational hatred whether it be directed at a person’s race, religion, skin colour, a particular accent, sexuality or even a chosen way of dressing. Through their understanding and personalising of the story of a persecuted teenager, young people – who are facing moral dilemmas every day of their lives – can be encouraged to reflect on the injustices they see around them.

  Finally, there is a message of hope to impart to young people. But it is not in the often quoted, out-of-context line near the end of Anne’s diary, in which she states, ‘I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,’ because of course some of the people she had the misfortune to encounter were not good at heart and there is no happy ending to Anne’s life, only unimaginable cruelty, pain and suffering. The message of hope is that one person can make a difference: Otto Frank’s determination to have Anne’s diary and these tales published, together with travelling exhibitions about her life and the preservation of her hiding place, which millions of people have visited, lead us to learn h
ow not to hate.

  Gillian Walnes MBE

  Co-founder and Executive Director

  The Anne Frank Trust UK

  www.annefrank.org.uk

  Copyright

  This ebook published in Great Britain by

  Halban Publishers Ltd.

  22 Golden Square

  London W1F 9JW

  2012

  Originally published in Great Britain by Halban Publishers, 2010

  www.halbanpublishers.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 905559 37 4

  Copyright © 1949, 1960 by Otto Frank

  Copyright © 1982, 2003, 2010 by Anne Frank Fonds, Basel

  English translation copyright © 2003, 2010 by Susan Massotty

  Jacket illustrations copyright © Anne Frank Fonds, Basel/Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  This compilation was first published in Dutch by Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 1982 under the title Verhaaltjes, en gebeurtenissen uit het Achterhuis

  This translation was first published in the U.S.A. by Bantam Books, New York, 2003. The complete and revised edition was published as Tales from the Secret Annex and Cady’s Life in The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, Doubleday, New York, 2003

  Portions of this work were previously published in Tales from the House Behind (World’s Work, Kingswood [Surrey] 1962; Pan Books, London, 1965) and Tales from the Secret Annexe (Viking, 1985; Penguin Books, London, 1986)