Anne Frank by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

young wife, who would be killed in the war, had been taken away the night before.
    After the war, in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Presser would go on to write a definitive history of the period, The Destruction of the Dutch Jews. Among the remarkable aspects of Presser’s book is hisdocumentation of the bizarre respect for the legal process—the concern that everything be done according to the letter of the law—that went hand in hand with the Nazis’ brutality. Each order depriving the Jews of their dignity, their liberty, and their ability to sustain themselves featured clauses and subclauses designed to make everything “clear.” If a law was found to be “flawed”—for example, if it was discovered that the Jews required to hand in their radios were giving up old or damaged sets and keeping better models—a new law would be passed, modifying and improving the old one; now, upon surrendering their radios, Jews were forced to sign a statement swearing that they had not substituted inferior ones, and those who had already given up their sets were called back to fill out a declaration. When it was decreed that Jews could no longer ride in motorized vehicles, an exception was made for funerals; the corpse could be transported in a hearse, but the mourners still had to walk.
    In January 1942, the Franks signed up for “voluntary emigration.” And in April, the Jewish Council, established to control and pacify the Jewish population, distributed over half a million yellow stars, with directions on how they should be worn by every Jew over six years of age. The mandatory stars were given out along with a bill: each star cost a few pennies and one textile-ration coupon. One teacher at the Jewish Lyceum refused to wear his star because, he said, he refused to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. When his students argued that they had been told the star was a badge of honor—as Anne says in the dramatized versions of her diary—the teacher replied that those who thought so should wear it. Ultimately, he gave in, and his wife, weeping, sewed the star to his jacket. After a week, he decided to face the consequences and removed the star.
    So many Dutch people also wore yellow stars in solidarity that, as Miep Gies reports, their South Amsterdam neighborhood was jokingly known as the Milky Way. But the Germans made it clear that this was not a joke, and after a few arrests, only the Jews were left wearing their six-pointed badges.
     
    F URTHER along in the June 20, 1942, entry, the introductory letter that Anne added to her revisions so as to bring Kitty (and future readers of Het Achterhuis ) up to the point at which she intends her book to begin, she lists the regulations and prohibitions that have affected her most deeply: Jews were forbidden to ride in trams. They were required to hand in their bicycles, to do their grocery shopping between three and five in the afternoon, to stay indoors from eight at night until six in the morning. They were banned from theaters and cinemas, from swimming pools and public sports, and were not allowed to visit Christians.
    “So we could not do this and were forbidden to do that. But life went on in spite of it all. Jacque used to say to me, ‘You’re scared to do anything because it may be forbidden.’ Our freedom was strictly limited. Yet things were still bearable.” (The “Jacque” whom Anne refers to here is her friend Jacqueline van Maarsen.)
    As if to restore her sense of perspective, Anne quickly moves on to the unbearable thing. “Granny died in January 1942.” Then she returns to the subject of how the Nazi laws have affected her life, how she was forced to leave a favorite teacher when she transferred to the Jewish Lyceum.
    The entry concludes, “So far everything is all right with the four of us and here I come to the present day.”
     
    S O F AR everything is all right with the four of us.
    On December 1, 1940, almost seven