Anne Frank
We have been sheltering-in-place for several months now. Most of us have grown heartily tired of it. Yet others have done this for much longer, and for much greater life-and-death reasons. Anne Frank was one.
Beginning July 6, 1942, Anne Frank hid with her family and others in cramped concealed rooms while Nazis hunted Jews. Her family was discovered and arrested on August 4, 1944 and sent to concentration camps. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen in February or March 1945 of typhus or typhoid fever, both rampant in the camp. She was 15 years old.
Here are some quotes from her diary:
“I live in a crazy time.”
“We all live with the objective of being happy;
our lives are all different and yet the same.”
“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky,
and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”
“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
“I think it’s odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it.”
“Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience
that ‘a quiet conscience makes one strong!'”
“Where there’s hope, there’s life.
It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”
“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news.
The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be!
How much you can love! What you can accomplish!
And what your potential is!”
“Look at how a single candle can
both defy and define the darkness.”