پنجشنبه، بیست و پنجم می ۱۹۴۴

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Thursday, 25 May 1944

Something happens every day now. This morning they arrested Mr van Hoeven, the man who brings the potatoes. He was helping two Jews, who were hiding in his house. The world is turned upside down.

The best people are in concentration camps and prisons, while the worst decide to put them there. It’s terrible for Mr van Hoeven, and for those poor Jews. It’s also very difficult for us.

Bep can’t possibly carry all those heavy potatoes, so we’ll have to eat less of them. Mother says that we won’t eat breakfast; lunch will be bread and something simple; and dinner will be potatoes. If possible, we’ll eat vegetables or lettuces once or twice a week. That’s all there is.

Monday, 5 June 1944

There are new problems in the Annexe now. There’s a quarrel between Dussel and the Franks. We can’t agree how to share out the butter.

Then the van Daans don’t agree that we should make a cake for Mr Kugler’s birthday when we can’t have one ourselves. It’s all very silly. Mood upstairs: bad. Mrs van Daan has a cold.

The weather is awful. The Allies are bombing the Pas de Calais and the west coast of France.

No one is buying American dollars now, and they aren’t interested in gold either. We shall soon come to the bottom of our black money-box.

How will we have enough money to live next month? ‘This is D-Day,’ the BBC said on the radio at twelve o’clock. ‘This is the day.’ The invasion has begun!

The German news says that British soldiers have arrived on the coast of France, and are fighting the Germans there.

At one o’clock the BBC said that 11,000 planes are flying in to help the invasion. They’re carrying soldiers, or on bombing raids.

4,000 boats are arriving on the coast between Cherbourg and Le Havre. British and American armies are already fighting there.

We can’t believe it! Is this really the beginning of the end of the war? We’ve talked about it so much - but it still seems too good to be true!

Will they win the war this year, in 1944? We don’t know yet. But where there’s hope, there’s life. It makes us brave and strong again.

Now that the invasion has started, I feel that friends are coming! Maybe, Margot says, I can even go back to school in September or October!