Anne Frank
A quilt square stitched in hopes you will gain loving insights for the world.
Excerpts from a 7-page message to the future President.
“Your legacy of achievement will be the measure of your humanity… It all comes down to simplicity, to decency, to tolerance, to humanity. And its dawn is love.”
Of all those who offer insights and support to the President-elect in this compilation of voices, Anne was the youngest one at the time of her death. Offering the raw experiences of her short life, she speaks strongly about racism and prejudice. She describes the ongoing oppression she lived under, including the constant fear of betrayal, should authorities learn of her identity in a nation that denied those of her ethnic background the right to freedom or even life itself.
Her appeal to the President-elect is a call to introspection and written reflection on the significance and gravity of his decision-making at this juncture in history. To emphasize its importance, she includes her own reflections on her experience of living in a society where she was scorned, isolated, and hidden away until her death at age 15.
“President-elect Trump—You have such a critical and both ‘mind-wrenching’ and ‘heart-wrenching’ decision to make in how you see your next moments—days and months…In how you see life and death. —What will you do?
In the camps, these are the images I dreamed of and quested to write about, though my heart was begging for a way to record all these small thoughts I put before you today.
I, as a writer of passion with passion, had no papyrus, no notebook paper, and no way to capture the poetry of the majesty of human death from the inside out, given our surroundings as we lived the tragedy shrouding us.
The fact that our hopes were stilled and withered in our hearts that could barely keep down the anguish we innately imagined was our fate.
It was a simple Quest and dream to capture the hope and agony of what we didn’t totally know was to befall us. And the infinite ways in the shadows of our camp life.
Grace from our God seemed distant. Too far away to bring down and corral within our minds, to keep hope instilled and vibrant and alive. These are the stories—of life in the camps—that I longed to transcribe for those in our future who could read them through a young girl’s eyes.”
Listening. Listening to the heartbeat of my crush on Peter, our housemate, made fluttery my heart in a schoolgirl’s future dreams. And what happened to those dreams? Dissolving, even as we walked back into the sunlight from our thickly clothed hiding place, I was astounded how quickly those dreams faded. In its place was fear—from feeling we were followed. Then, knowing we were. Then, having little thought at all. This was the death of a dream, but a heart, a hearth, a family circle.
This is not about what is best or better or any modicum of such an idea. It is not to travel through life with only one pride. You need to share with them your own story. But you have to see it first. Write it first. BE it first.”