یکشنبه، پانزدهم ژانویه ۱۹۴۴

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Saturday, 15 January 1944

I won’t tell you all the details of our quarrels in the Annexe. But we are not sharing our food in the same way now - we’ve got our own stores of meat and oil, and we even cook our own potatoes.

Mother made a wish, ‘I don’t want to see Mr van Daan’s face for two whole weeks.’ Unfortunately, her wish is not likely to come true. Does everyone who shares a house become like this? Or are we just unlucky?

Thursday, 3 February 1944

Everybody is thinking about the Allied invasion! What will happen to us if the British invade Holland. The Germans say that they will let the water from the sea into the country. Each person has his or her own idea.

‘We’ll have to walk through the water.’

‘Don’t be silly! We’ll have to try and swim. We’ll swim underwater, and then nobody will see that we are Jews!’

‘Oh, rubbish! Can ladies swim when rats are biting their legs?’ Next question: when the invasion comes, will the authorities make everybody leave Amsterdam?

‘We’ll leave the city with all the other people.’

‘No, we mustn’t go outside! The Germans will send everyone to die in Germany.’

‘All right, we’ll stay here. Let’s ask Miep for some extra blankets. And some more food. We’ve got about sixty-five pounds of beans at the moment, and fifty tins of vegetables.’

‘What’s in the stores, Mother? Tell us.’

‘Ten tins of fish, forty tins of milk, three bottles of oil, four jars of butter, four jars of fruit, twenty jars of tomatoes and nine pounds of rice. That’s it.’

Our stores are still quite good. But we do have to feed the people in the office too.

‘Let’s make little bags for our money that we can hide in our clothes if we have to leave here.’

And so it goes on all day. That’s all I hear - invasion, invasion, only invasion. I’m very calm about it. I don’t care now whether I live or die. I’ll just keep on with my work and hope that everything will be all right in the end.