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Dear Kitty, Saturday, 20 June, 1942
... Our family ... felt the full impact of Hitler's anti-Jewish laws, so life was filled with anxiety. In 1938 after the pogroms, my two uncles (my mother's brothers) escaped to the U.S.A. My old grandmother came to us, she was then seventy-three. After May 1940 good times rapidly fled: first the war, then the capitulation, followed by the arrival of the Germans, which is when the sufferings of us Jews really began. Anti-Jewish decrees followed each other in quick succession. Jews must wear a yellow star, Jews must hand in their bicycles, Jews are banned frm trams and forbidden to drive. Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o'clock and then only in shops which bear the placard "Jewish shop." Jews must be indoors by eight o'clock and cannot even sit in their own gardens after that hour. Jews are forbidden to visit theaters, cinemas, and other places of entertainment. Jews may not take part in public sports. Swimming baths, tennis courts, hockey fields, and other sports grounds are all prohibited to them. Jews may not visit Christians. Jews must go to Jewish schools and many more restrictions of a similar kind. Yours, Anne
Dear Kitty, Thursday, 19 November, 1942
... Countless friends and aquaintances have gone to a terrible fate. Evening after evening the green and gray army lorries trundle past. The Germans ring at every front door to inquire if there are any Jews living in the house. If there are, then the whole family has to go at once. If they don't find any, they go on to the next house. No one has a chance of evading them unless one goes into hiding... Sometimes they let them off for cash--so much per head. It seems like the slave hunts of olden times. But it's certainly no joke; it's much too tragic for that. In the evenings when it's dark, I often see rows of good innocent people accompanied by crying children walking on and on, in charge of a couple of these chaps, bullied, and knocked about until they almost drop. No one is spared--old people, babies, expectant mothers, the sick--each and all join in the march of death.
How fortunate we are here, so well cared for and undisturbed. We would have to worry about all this misery were it not wthat we are anxious about all those dear to us whom we can no long help.
Yours, Anne
Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. New York: The American Reprint Co, 1959. 29, 68-69. Print.
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