CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Friday, 31 March 1944

Just imagine, it’s still cold, but most people have had nothing to put on their fires for a month now. It sounds awful, doesn’t it? But we are hopeful about the Russians, who are doing well. They’ve reached Poland now, and the Prut River in Romania. They’re close to Odessa too.

The German Army has invaded Hungary. A million Jews still live there; there is no hope for them now.

Nothing special is happening here. Today is Mr van Daan’s birthday. He received several presents and a cake. The cake wasn’t perfect, because we can’t buy the right things to make it with, but it tasted wonderful anyway!

People are not saying so much about Peter and me now. We’re very good friends. We spend a lot of time together, and we talk about anything and everything. I couldn’t talk to other boys like this. We even talked about periods. He thinks that women are strong enough to lose the blood, and that I am too. I wonder why he thinks that?

My life here is better now, much better. God has not left me, and He never will.

Monday, 3 April 1944

I’m going to describe our food rations. Food is a difficult and important problem not only for us in the Annexe, but for everyone in Holland, all of Europe and even further away.

We’ve lived here for twenty-one months, and often at any one time there was only one kind of food to eat. For example, one kind of vegetable or salad. We would eat it with potatoes, in every possible way that we could think of.

But now there are no vegetables at all. We have potatoes, and brown beans. We make soup – we still have some packets and stores to make dishes which are a little bit more interesting. But it’s beans with everything, even in the bread.

The most exciting moment is when we eat a thin piece of sausage once a week, and put some jam on our bread – no butter, of course! But we’re still alive, and much of the time the food tastes good too.