Nina's Reading

This is my aunt, Anne Striliver. I never met her. She was murdered by the Nazis in Kiev around 1943. My mother told me stories about her younger sister.

Anne Striliver was a couple years older than another martyred girl, Anne Frank, both snuffed out in early youth by evil.

Today, however, the memory of Anne Frank was brought to my mind not by association with my lost aunt but by the scary current events - life in hiding, life in fear. To see if there are any similarities between the extreme horror of the Holocaust and the unsettling difficulties of what we are going through today I reread "The Diary of a Young Girl". Of course it is blasphemy to equate the two life situations but some analogies surface.

Fear of impending seclusion

SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1942 A few days ago, as we were taking a stroll around our neighborhood square, Father began to talk about going into hiding. He said it would be very hard for us to live cut off from the rest of the world.

Escalation of events leading to seclusion

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1942 “Father has received a call-up notice from the SS,” I was stunned. A call-up: everyone knows what that means. Visions of concentration camps and lonely cells raced through my head.

July 10, 1942 The hiding place was located in Father’s office building. She shut the door behind us, leaving us alone.

Raw fear

COMMENT ADDED BY ANNE ON SEPTEMBER 28, 1942: Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I’m terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we’ll be shot. That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect.

Children falling behind on school work

August 21, 1942 I’m not doing much schoolwork. I’ve given myself a vacation until September. Father wants to start tutoring me then, but we have to buy all the books first.

Adjustment to the new circumstances

September 29, 1942 The strangest things happen to you when you’re in hiding! Try to picture this. Because we don’t have a bathtub, we wash ourselves in a washtub, and because there’s only hot water in the office (by which I mean the entire lower floor), the seven of us take turns making the most of this great opportunity. But since none of us are alike and are all plagued by varying degrees of modesty, each member of the family has selected a different place to wash.

Anguish over the seriousness of the situation

OCTOBER 9, 1942 Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews.

Fear of unrelated sickness and lack of medical care

OCTOBER 29, 1942 I’m very worried. Father’s sick. He’s covered with spots and has a high temperature. It looks like measles. Just think, we can’t even call a doctor! Mother is making him perspire in hopes of sweating out the fever.

Guilt over your comfort compared to the predicament of others

NOVEMBER 19, 1942 We’re so fortunate here, away from the turmoil. We wouldn’t have to give a moment’s thought to all this suffering if it weren’t for the fact that we’re so worried about those we hold dear, whom we can no longer help. I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while somewhere out there my dearest friends are dropping from exhaustion or being knocked to the ground.

Futile guesses of when the situation will end

MAY 2, 1943 In the opinion of us all, Mr. van Daan has great insight into politics. Nevertheless, he predicts we’ll have to stay here until the end of ’43. That’s a very long time, and yet it’s possible to hold out until then. But who can assure us that this war, which has caused nothing but pain and sorrow, will then be over? And that nothing will have happened to us and our helpers long before that time?

Desperate longing for the situation to end

NOVEMBER 8, 1943 I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we’ve been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, “Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out!”

I am sure that the coronavirus quarantine will end and we shall all recover.

But the horrors of our past come to mind.

Nina's Reading

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Notes from Another Quarantine

Fear of impending seclusion

Escalation of events leading to seclusion

Raw fear

Children falling behind on school work

Adjustment to the new circumstances

Anguish over the seriousness of the situation

Fear of unrelated sickness and lack of medical care

Guilt over your comfort compared to the predicament of others

Futile guesses of when the situation will end

Desperate longing for the situation to end

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