Patricia Kolesnicov
07/26/2021 3:13 PM
Clarín.com
Culture
Updated 07/26/2021 3:13 PM
There are books that everyone can talk about even without ever having looked at them.
In Argentina, Martín Fierro, let's say: you know what it's about.
The
same thing happens
with the
Diary of Anne Frank
, but across borders.
Anyone knows the horror that counts, although these days on Showmatch they seem to have forgotten it.
The episode resonated over the weekend: a choreography was presented for a song by Paulina Rubio, the one that says "I am not that woman who does not leave the house and who puts the best of her soul at your feet." Behind, photos of "Empowered" women. Right in the part where it says "That spoiled, spoiled, lost girl", the face of
Anne Frank appears
. Among strong women.
Yes, it was a tough
Anne Frank
.
And
two years he did not leave the house at all
.
But...
Actually,
Anne Frank was
more than a woman a teenager and where she did not come out
was not even her house: it
was a hiding place - "the annex" - which, in Amsterdam.
he had armed the family so the Nazis would not capture them and send them
to the slaughterhouse
.
They were
kept for
two years
, without poking their noses and living with another family
.
Two years eating what you could and managing to make a living in a room, walking in silence so that no good neighbor would hear anything strange, outcasts, invisible.
And it wasn't even enough: they finally found them and of the eight hidden people
survived ... one
.
Ana's father.
He had that diary published in which the girl reflected the daily life of the confinement and to which he wrote giving her the name "Kitty", imagining a friend.
He did not leave his house,
as in the song
, but that
was a desperate resource
.
Here are some paragraphs from
Anne Frank herself
that describe this confinement:
July 8, 1942
Ana's sister Margot speaks:
-Dad has received a summons from the SS.
I was terrified: everyone knows what a subpoena means;
he immediately imagined the
concentration camps
, the solitary cells.
Were we going to let them take Dad there?
🔴Using Anne Frank as the background of a song by a woman who refuses to stay at home is taking the banalization of the Holocaust to an extreme expression.
It is an act of humiliation to the victims, to the survivors and to those who choose human dignity as a life option
- Centro Ana Frank AR (@centro_anafrank) July 24, 2021
-Mom has gone to the Van Daan house to see if we can inhabit our hideout from tomorrow.
The Van Daan
will hide there with us
.
The next morning at 5:30, Mom woke me up.
Luckily, it was less hot than Sunday, thanks to a warm rain that was to persist all day.
Each of us had dressed as if to live in the refrigerator, in order to take as many clothes as possible.
No Jew, under these circumstances,
could have left his house with a full suitcase.
I was wearing two shirts, three shorts, a dress, a skirt, a jacket, a summer coat, two pairs of socks, laced shoes, a beret, a scarf, and other things.
October 8, 1942
Our many Jewish friends are little by little embarked by the
Gestapo
, which does not walk with contemplations;
they are transported
in cattle trucks
to Westerbork, a large camp for Jews, in Drenthe.
Hidden entrance.
It was concealed by a library.
Photo EFE
Westerbork must be a nightmare:
only one toilet for every hundred people
, and no toilets.
Promiscuity is egregious.
Men, women and children sleep together.
Impossible to run away.
Most are marked by shaved skulls, and many, furthermore, by their Jewish type.
If that happens already in Holland, what will it be in the far-flung and barbarous regions of which Westerbork is nothing more than the lobby?
English radio
talks about gas chambers
.
After all, it may be the best way to die quickly.
February 3, 1944
-What will we do with all our reserves if they cut off water, gas and electricity?
-In this case, it will be cooked on the stove, with boiled rainwater.
We will make a reserve of water, starting by filling all the demijohns.
I hear conversations like this all day.
the invasion here, the invasion there, and the discussions about hunger, bombs, fire extinguishers, mattresses, Jewish certificates, asphyxiating gases, etc.
I don't care to live or die. There you have what I have come to.
March 29, 1944
Last night, on the Dutch overseas broadcast, Minister Bolkestein said in his speech that after the war letters and memoirs concerning our time will be collected.
Naturally, all eyes turned to me;
my journal seemed taken by storm
.
Imagine a novel called
The Secret Annex
, whose author was me!
Wouldn't that be interesting?
(The mere title would already make you think of a detective novel).
Before the horror.
The Frank family in the Merwedeplein square in Amsterdam, in 1941. Photo of the Anne Frank Foundation
But let's be serious.
Ten years after the war,
my story of
eight Jews in hiding
, their way of living, eating and speaking
,
would surely have a strange effect
.
Although I have told you a lot about it, in reality you know very little, very little.
April 3, 1944
We eat potatoes at every meal, starting with breakfast, because of the lack of bread.
At night, we always eat potatoes dressed with synthetic sauce and, luckily, a rotten carrot salad, from our reserve.
May 8, 1944
Now we can no longer be considered rich, but I am confident that we will rebuild after the war.
Unlike Margot's mother, I assure you that I would not be content with a small restricted life.
I would like to spend a year in Paris and another in London, to study languages and art history.
May 12, 1944
You have known for a long time what my greatest desire is;
one day become a journalist
and later a famous writer.
Gas chamber, Auschwitz.
The place of death for many Jews during the Holocaust.
Photo Ap
In any case, after the war he
would want to publish a novel
about the annex.
I do not know if I will succeed but my diary will serve as a document.
May 25, 1944
This morning, our vegetable supplier was arrested: he
had two Jews in his house
.
It is a terrible blow for us, not only because two more poor Jews are on the brink, but because the provider is also in the same trance.
Mom has proposed
that we skip breakfast
, eat oatmeal for lunch and skip potatoes at night, and once or twice a week, at most, vegetables or salad.
That means
hunger
, but all these hardships are nothing compared to the horror of being discovered.
May 26, 1944
We have been here
for two years now
, how long are we going to be able to resist this unbearable pressure and stronger every day?
As
the drains are clogged
, we must run the water with a dropper;
we go to the toilet provided with a brush, and we keep the dirty water in a container.
Today, that can happen, but what are we going to do if the plumber can't handle it alone?
Miep has sent us
a rye bread
with the inscription: "Happy Pentecost."
This almost sounds like a joke.
How to be "happy" in the state we are in?
Dad and the girls.
Otto Frank, with his daughters.
He would be the only survivor.
Photo EFE
More than once I wonder if, for all of us,
it would not have been worth more not to hide and be now dead
, before going through all these calamities.
That something happens very soon,
that the bombs arrive
if necessary, because they could not crush us more than this concern.
May the end come, even if it is hard;
at least we will know if, ultimately.
We must win or perish.
June 6, 1944 (D-Day)
The annex is an erupting volcano.
Is that long-awaited freedom really close?
Isn't that much talked about freedom too beautiful, like a fairy tale, to become reality?
The end.
Holocaust survivors, behind barbed wire, when Auschwitz is liberated.
Photo Reuter
After having had the knife to our throats, having been oppressed for so long by those horrible Germans, we cannot help but feel overflowing with confidence, thinking of salvation and friends.
June 15, 1944
It may be a longing for the outdoors, after being deprived of it for so long, but
I miss nature more than ever
.
I still remember very well that before I was never so fascinated by a dazzling blue sky, by birdsong, by moonlight, by plants and flowers.
Here, I have changed.
June 23, 1944
We have almost
no potatoes left
;
in the future, we will count them so that each one knows their part.
July 15, 1944
It is surprising that I
have not yet abandoned all my hopes
, since they seem absurd and unrealizable.
Yet I cling to them, despite everything, because I still believe in the innate goodness of man.
And the end
The last entry is from August 1, 1944. Three days later -declaration or chance-, the hiding place is discovered.
The police take them all.
Ana - she was 15 years old - is separated from her family and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A month later they send it to Bergen Belsen.
There he died of typhoid fever in February 1945.
The allies liberated the camp two months later
.
PK
.
Look also
Who was Anne Frank and why her Museum thinks the controversial scene at ShowMatch will be useful
After the controversial scene, Tinelli's production signed an agreement with the Anne Frank Center