Short Anne Frank Quotes

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

And yet not every sense of what's good and right can be trusted, for what else is war but two sides going to battle over what each thinks is right?

Ajungi să cunoști bine oamenii abia după ce te-ai certat cu ei o dată. Abia atunci poți să le judeci caracterul!

Everyone is born equal; we will all die and shed our earthly glory. Riches, power and fame last for only a few short years. Why do we cling so desperately to these fleeting things? Why can't people who have more than enough for their own needs give the rest to their fellow human beings? Why should anyone have to have such a hard life for those few short years on earth?

Căci în mod fundamental tinerețea este mai solitară decât bătrânețea.

Give and you shall receive, much more than you ever thought possible. Give and give again. Keep hoping, keep trying, keep giving! People who give will never be poor!

I'm afraid my common sense, which was in short supply to begin with, wil be used up too quickly and I won't have any left by the time the war is over.

Dimineața suntem normali, după-amiaza cam tot așa, cu unele excepții, dar seara dorința de peste zi, fericirea și deliciile tuturor dăților precedente redevin vii și nu mai facem altceva decât să ne gândim unul la celălalt.

And now I have a question for you. 'Do you also put clothes on the flowers you've picked and refuse to talk about their delicate parts?' I don't think there's a very big difference between people and nature, and since we're also a part of nature, why should we be ashamed of the way nature made us?

O conștiință împăcată te face puternic.

Chipul lui mi-a revenit așa de limpede în memorie, încât acum știu că nimeni altcineva nu va putea rămâne atât de prezent în mine.

Sunt obișnuită să nu fiu luată în serios.

Câtă vreme te poți uita fără teamă la cer, vei ști că lăuntric ești pur și că, orice-ar fi, îți vei regăsi fericirea.

Nu sunt bogată în bani sau bunuri materiale, nu sunt frumoasă, inteligentă, superdotată, dar sunt și voi fi fericită! Am o fire veselă, iubesc oamenii, nu sunt suspicioasă și vreau să-i văd pe toți fericiți odată cu mine.

Îmi dau seama că o etapă din ea s-a încheiat definitiv: perioada fără griji și necazuri a anilor de școală nu se mai întoarce niciodată. Nici măcar n-o regret, am depășit stadiul ăsta, nu pot să fac doar tâmpenii, o părticică din mine își păstrează mereu gravitatea.

Avea părul negru și niște ochi căprui minunați, obrajii arămii și un nas ascuțit. mai ales râsul lui îmi plăcea la nebunie, și mai avea și un aer așa de ștrengăresc și obraznic!

Mi-e teamă de mine însămi, mi-e teamă ca, în dorința mea, să nu mă dăruiesc prea repede.

Femeile sunt niște soldați care luptă și suferă pentru supraviețuirea omenirii, mult mai viteji, mult mai curajoși decât numeroșii eroi ai libertății cu gura lor mare.

Nu degeaba se spune despre mine că sunt un mănunchi de contradicții!

Sigur, eu sunt un clovn amuzant pentru o după-amiază, după care toți se satură de mine pentru o lună întreagă.

Sunt exact ce este un film de dragoste pentru oamenii profunzi, o simplă distracție, un divertisment ocazional, ceva ce se uită repede, nu ceva prost, dar nici neapărat bun.

Vreau să continui să trăiesc, chiar și după ce am murit.

De cele mai multe ori, oamenii proști nu pot suporta gândul că alții fac ceva mai bine ca ei.

În orice reproș e și ceva adevărat.

Îl iubeam așa de tare, încât n-am vrut să privesc adevărul în față și m-am ținut scai de el.

Azi-dimineață am înțeles că nu s-a schimbat nimic, dimpotrivă, în timp ce am crescut și m-am maturizat, a crescut și iubirea din mine.

Nu-i așa că sunt groaznică fiindcă sunt preocupată tot timpul de mine însămi?

Să meriți fericirea înseamnă să muncești pentru ea.

Uneori mi se pare foarte trist că nu putem mărturisi nimănui, nici măcar oamenilor care ne sunt cei mai apropiați, ce avem pe suflet.

Pentru orice om căruia îi este frică, care e singur sau nefericit, remediul cel mai bun este în mod cert să iasă afară.

Plânsul poate să-ți aducă o mare ușurare, dar numai dacă ai pe cineva lângă tine.

Cu toată iubirea multora din jur, un om poate să se simtă singur atunci când nu e pentru nimeni “cel mai drag”.

Niciodată imaginea lui nu mi-a apărut atât de limpede. Nu-mi trebuie nici o fotografie de-a lui, îl văd așa de bine, așa de bine.

Nu știu ce să citesc, ce să scriu, ce să fac, nu știu decât că mi-e dor...

Trăgeam aerul în piept, ne uitam afară și simțeam că era vorba de ceva ce nu trebuia întrerupt de cuvinte.

Dacă nu scrii tu însuți, n-ai cum să știi ce minunat e să scrii.

Întotdeauna există inima și rațiunea, fiecare trebuie să vorbească la timpul său.

Sincer vorbind, nu pot să-mi imaginez prea bine cum poate cineva să spună “Sunt slab” și să continue să rămână slab.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People

E un mare miracol că n-am renunțat la toate speranțele mele, căci ele par absurde și irealizabile. Cu toate astea, eu țin la ele, fiindcă tot mai cred în bunătatea interioară a oamenilor.

Aș fi vrut să-l rog: povestește-mi ceva despre tine. Nu lua în seamă limbuția mea nefastă! Mi-am dat seama însă că-i mai ușor să-ți formulezi pentru tine astfel de rugăminți decât să le adresezi altcuiva.

Nu există decât o singură regulă de care trebuie să ții seama: să râzi de toate și să nu-ți pese de nimeni! Pare egoist, dar, în realitate, ăsta e singurul remediu pentru cei care-și plâng singuri de milă.

She had often thought of Anne Frank, who had stuffed her short life with so much wonder, while here she was, having been granted many more years, just going through the motions like she was a ten-penny wind-up doll.

So far, all those who have tried to impose their version of what's right on others have failed. After a few years, or even longer, people always want their freedom and their own rights back. This is because having to obey one concept of right is inherently unjust. God has given each of us a unique sense of right, so when we are forced to live under someone else's for years and years, we run the risk of losing our own. But not everyone can be crushed. Sooner or later the longing for freedom is bound to assert itself. “Without realizing it, I've gone from justice to freedom, but I believe that it is only when these two are combined that something great will happen. “Who knows, perhaps one day people will listen more to that ‘little bit of God—known as a conscience—than to their own desires!

the men went downstairs to see if the outside door was still locked, but all was well! Of course, we gave the entire office staff a blow-by-blow account of the incident, which had been far from pleasant. It’s much easier to laugh at these kinds of things after they’ve happened, and Bep was the only one who took us seriously.

When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word “why” not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.

sadness comes from feeling sorry for yourself and happiness from joy.” I stopped talking

In one Way or another, the day would come when my name would be a household word and my picture would occupy a place of honour in the memory book of every damp-eyed film fan

Friday, December 10, 1942

Wednesday, July 7, 1943

Miss Biegel of Biology (gone are the days when it was called Natural History):

After that I was free to enjoy the rest of my unforgettable vacation, and now that I had seen the life of the stars up close, I was cured once and for all of my delusions of fame.

I thanked the interesting old lady and I now know that so-called interesting men owe their reputation to their looks alone.

[I]t was in the pairs that the prisoners kept alive the semblance of humanity concluded Elmer Luchterhand, a sociologist at Yale who interviewed fifty-two concentration camp survivors shortly after liberation. Pairs stole food and clothing for each other, exchanged small gifts and planned for the future. If one member of a pair fainted from hunger in front of an SS officer, the other would prop him up. Survival . . . could only be a social achievement, not an individual accident, wrote Eugene Weinstock, a Belgian resistance fighter and Hungarian-born Jew who was sent to Buchenwald in 1943. Finally the death of one member of a pair often doomed the other. Women who knew Anne Frank in the Bergen-Belsen camp said that neither hunger nor typhus killed the young girl who would become the most famous diarist of the Nazi era. Rather, they said, she lost the will to live after the death of her sister, Margot.

Everyone is born equal; we all come into the world helpless and innocent. We all breathe the same air, and many of us believe in the same God. And yet … and yet, to many people this one small difference is a huge one! It's huge because many people have never realized what the difference is, for if they had they would have discovered long ago that there's actually no difference at all!

Anne Frank is best known as the writer of her world-famous diary, though she tried her hand at other genres as well. Between September 1943 and May 1944, Anne wrote numerous stories, fairy tales, essays and personal reminiscences in a stiff-backed notebook reserved for that purpose. She did her utmost to make it resemble a real book, copying her stories neatly into the notebook and adding a title page, a table of contents, page numbers and so forth. Her collection of tales is now reproduced here in full, in a new translation, in the exact order in which she wrote them in her notebook.

Now that the war has long been over, I know why my fear vanished beneath that spacious sky. You see, once I was alone with nature I realized, without actually being aware of it, that fear doesn't help, that it doesn't get you anywhere. Anyone who's as frightened as I was should look to nature and realize that God is much closer than most people think. From that moment on, though countless bombs fell close by, I was never truly afraid again.

Take a look,” I said. “If you want to find inner happiness, go outside on a nice day with lots of sun and blue sky. Even if you stand at a window and look out over the city at the cloudless sky, like we're doing now, you'll eventually find happiness.

Yes, in the sense that I felt a certain contentment. Not always, mind you. I moaned and groaned from time to time. But I was never downright depressed again, probably because I realized that sadness comes from feeling sorry for yourself and happiness from joy.

Helpless, heartbroken and lonely, Katrien sank into the grass at the side of the road and wept—wept until she had no more tears. Darkness had already set in by the time she picked up the overturned basket and headed home. From somewhere in the grass came the gleam of a silver thimble…

In the old days, when I was a little girl, Pim used to tell me stories about “Der bösen Paula.”* He had a whole collection of Paula stories, and I adored them all. Now, whenever I go to him for comfort in the middle of the night, he's started telling me Paula stories again, so I've written down the latest one.

Most people are blinded by the outer glow. If they'd been allowed to vote, very few people would have picked the rose. The rose is majestic and beautiful, and just as in the real world, no one asks the flowers whether a bloom which is outwardly less pretty might actually be inwardly more beautiful and more fit to rule.

They were pale, and didn't say a word when Cady entered the room. Had they been sitting like this every night for months? Seeing all those pale and frightened faces was awful. With each bang of an outside door, a shock went through everyone in the room, as if the door to life itself were symbolically being slammed shut.

As Eva grew older, she did a lot of good things for those around her. At the age of sixteen (four years after meeting the elf), she was generally acknowledged to be a friendly, gentle and helpful girl. Every time she did something good, she felt happy and warm inside, and she gradually came to understand what the elf had meant by “the song in her heart.

Do any of those people in their warm and cozy living rooms have any idea what kind of life a beggar leads? Do any of those “good” and “kind” people ever wonder about the lives of so many of the children and adults around them? Granted, everyone has given a coin to a beggar at some time or another, though they usually just shove it into his hand and slam the door.

Actually, what you're hoping to find when you're depressed is happiness. Even if you miss a lot because you have no one to talk to, once you've found your own inner happiness, you'll never lose it. I don't mean this in terms of material things, but in a spiritual sense. I believe that once your own inner happiness has been found, it might go underground for a while, but it will never be lost!

Scott stared at her mouth, just stared like he was hypnotized, paralyzed, like that crimson O was the answer to all of life’s problems, or maybe just his prayers. I kicked his shin to break the spell, which worked; he blinked, then ate the bite himself as if he’d never even offered it to anyone at all. I looked frankly at Carmel; her expression was innocently amused. There are women whose whole selves are engaged in being a public commodity, and Carmel was one of these. Every gesture she made, every syllable she uttered, the tinkle of her laughter, the way her dress’s fabric draped over her breasts, all of it was self-conscious and deliberate, designed to elicit admiration in women, desire in men. This isn’t to say I held any of that against her. Not a bit. I liked her, in fact. The way I saw it, she was a kind of living work of art, and funny and thoughtful besides. Was it her fault if she, as had happened to me, sometimes provoked the basest feelings in a man? Scott and Fred made short work of that second bottle of brandy while Carmel’s and my glasses still held our initial pour. I’d found that drinking very much of any kind of alcohol still did bad things to my stomach. Carmel might have found that it did bad things to her self-preservation; I know that if I looked like her, I’d never let down my guard.

First, there's the rose— the queen of the flowers; she's so beautiful and her fragrance is so intoxicating that it goes to everyone's head, most of all her own. The rose is beautiful, sweet-smelling and elegant, but if things aren't going her way, she shows her thorns. She's like a spoiled child—beautiful, elegant and seemingly nice as can be, but if you touch her or talk to someone else so that she's no longer the center of attention, out come her claws.

I believe that God speaks ‘through me’ because He gives each person a little bit of Himself before sending them into the world. It's this part of us that distinguishes between good and evil and answers our questions. This little bit of God is just as much a part of nature as the blossoming of flowers and the singing of birds. “But God has also given people passions and desires, and these desires are in conflict with goodness and justice. As Hans said, Our sense of what's good and right also comes from God.

At last she's through, her baskets are full. In the meantime the sun has set. Krista lies down in the grass, with her hands cupped behind her head and her eyes open, and looks at what's left of the pale-blue sky. This is the finest fifteen minutes of her day. You mustn't think that the little flower girl, who's worked so hard, is unhappy. She's never unhappy, and as long as she has these few moments every day, she never will be. There in the meadow, among the flowers and the grass, beneath the wide-open sky, Krista is content. Gone is her exhaustion, gone are the market and the people; she thinks and dreams only of the present. If only she can have this every day, a whole fifteen minutes of doing nothing, alone with God and nature.

This bluebell is simple and kind. It brings joy to the world. It chimes for flowers, just as church bells chime for people. It helps lots of flowers and is a comfort to them. The bluebell is never lonely; there's music in its heart. It's a much happier creature than the rose. The bluebell isn't interested in the praise of others. The rose lives and thrives on admiration. When that's missing, the rose has nothing to make her happy. Her outward appearance is for other people, but her heart is empty and therefore cheerless. The bluebell, on the other hand, may not be as beautiful, but she has ‘real’ friends who value her melodies; those friends live in the flower's heart.” “But the bluebell is also a pretty flower, isn't it?” “Yes, but not as eye-catching as the rose. Unfortunately, most people only notice the most obvious things.

After that night, a week went by before Cady had a chance to visit Mary again. But one afternoon she made the time, deciding not to worry about her homework or other engagements. Even before she arrived at the Hopkenses’, she had a feeling she wouldn't find Mary at home, and sure enough, when she got there, the door was sealed. A terrible feeling of despair came over Cady. “Who knows where Mary is now?” she thought. She turned on her heel and went home. Once there, she ran to her room, slammed the door, threw herself on the divan with her coat still on and thought about Mary, only Mary. Why did Mary have to go while she was allowed to stay? Why did Mary have to suffer this awful fate while she was free to enjoy herself? What was the difference between them? Was she any better than Mary? Weren't the two of them just the same? What crime had Mary ever committed? Oh, this had to be the most terrible injustice. Suddenly she saw Mary's frail figure before her, locked up in a cell, dressed in rags, with a sunken, emaciated face. Her eyes had become huge, and she was looking at Cady with such sorrow and reproach.

I've been thinking about God quite a bit lately, though I've never told anyone before. When I was a little girl, my parents taught me to say a prayer every night before I went to bed. It became a habit, like brushing my teeth. I took God for granted. I mean, I never thought about Him, because all my wants and needs were taken care of. Now that I've had this accident and I'm often alone, I've had more than enough time to ponder all kinds of things. One of the first nights I was here, I got halfway through my prayers and realized that my mind was on very different matters. So I did something I'd never done before. I started thinking about the underlying meaning of the words and discovered that there's much more to this supposedly simple child's prayer than I ever suspected. Since that night, I've been saying other prayers, things that I myself thought were beautiful, not just a standard prayer. But a few weeks ago, I was halfway through my prayers again when a thought struck me like a bolt of lightning: ‘Why should God help me now, in my hour of need, when I all but ignored Him in better days?’ This question kept haunting me, because I knew that it would only be fair if God were to ignore my prayers in return.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

Oooh,’ gushed Coco. ‘Love your jacket. So cute. And such a nice cut.’ I looked again. It was just a jacket, even though it was red and black. Could a jacket have a nice cut? What did that even mean? For me, a jacket was a back, two sleeves and two flaps at the front. Oh, and a collar. Bam. Done. Easy. I had no idea how Coco could say one jacket was cuter than another. And ‘cuter’? Puppies are cute. Foals are cute. Baby bunnies are cute. Jackets are not cute. ‘Thanks,’ I heard Baylor say. ‘I love your shorts. Adorable.’ I coughed and rubbed my eyes again. Honestly.

It is easier,” she replied frankly, “and often more emotionally satisfying to be mortally offended on behalf of your God than to serve Him by altering one’s style and manner of life—and in a short space, it is certainly much more comfortable. One can feel righteous, very much one who belongs, while heaping vengeance on the heads of sinners. It costs a lot less than giving time or money to the poor.” He ate the last of his salmon and offered her more wine. “You are becoming cynical, my dear.” “I was never anything else”—she accepted the wine—“where the self-proclaimed righteous were concerned. Was the case really so different from most?” “Yes.” He pushed his plate away and like a shadow the butler removed it. “There was a distinct alien culture which could be blamed,” Thelonius continued grimly, his eyes sad and angry. “Godman was a Jew, and the resultant anti-Semitic emotions were among the most unpleasant manifestations of human behavior that I have seen: anti-Semitic slogans daubed on walls, hysterical pamphlets scattered all over the place, even people hurling stones in the streets at those they took to be Jews—windows smashed in synagogues, one set fire to.

The most famous child survivor of the Holocaust in the 1950s was not Anne Frank—after all, she didn’t survive—but a young woman named Hannah Bloch Kohner. NBC television’s This Is Your Life was one of television’s first reality shows, in which host Ralph Edwards surprised a guest, often a celebrity, by reuniting him or her with friends and family members the guest hadn’t heard from in years. The program didn’t shy away from either political controversy or questionable sentimentality, as when guest Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who had survived the atomic bombing of Hirsohima in 1945, was introduced to the copilot of the Enola Gay. On May 27, 1953, This Is Your Life ambushed a beautiful young woman in the audience, escorted her to the stage, and proceeded, in a matter of minutes, to package, sanitize, and trivialize the Holocaust for a national television audience. Hannah Bloch Kohner’s claim to fame was that she had survived Auschwitz before emigrating, marrying, and settling in Los Angeles. She was the first Holocaust survivor to appear on a national television entertainment program. “Looking at you, it’s hard to believe that during seven short years of a still short life, you lived a lifetime of fear, terror, and tragedy,” host Edwards said to Kohner in his singsong baritone. “You look like a young American girl just out of college, not at all like a survivor of Hitler’s cruel purge of German Jews.” He then reunited a stunned Kohner with Eva, a girl with whom she’d spent eight months in Auschwitz, intoning, “You were each given a cake of soap and a towel, weren’t you, Hannah? You were sent to the so-called showers, and even this was a doubtful procedure, because some of the showers had regular water and some had liquid gas, and you never knew which one you were being sent to. You and Eva were fortunate. Others were not so fortunate, including your father and mother, your husband Carl Benjamin. They all lost their lives in Auschwitz.” It was an extraordinary lapse of sympathy, good taste, and historical accuracy—history that, if not common knowledge, had at least been documented on film. It would be hard to explain how Kohner ever made it on This Is Your Life to be the Holocaust’s beautiful poster girl if you didn’t happen to know that her husband—a childhood sweetheart who had emigrated to the United States in 1938—was host Ralph Edwards’s agent. Hannah Bloch’s appearance was a small, if crass, oasis of public recognition for Holocaust survivors—and child survivors especially—in a vast desert of indifference. It would be decades before the media showed them this much interest again.

green, white and yellow,

Author’s Note This series of stories are set in Australia and use Aussie words, expressions and spelling. We say ‘mum’ to rhyme with ‘thumb’. Year 9 is the same as ninth grade and high school begins in Year 7 and goes all the way through to Year 12. Christmas is in the summer. We do maths, not math, and we spell analyse (and a bunch of other words) with an ‘s’, not a ‘z’. In fact, lots of our spelling is just slightly different, so don’t get worried if it’s not what you’re used to.

And then, that Kapo behind you. You’re just a poor wretch and there’s a Kapo wearing a splendid woolen angora sweater and a short skirt and high boots and magnificently piled up hair. She follows you with a whip in her hand. I won’t say that they were all like that, but yes, we had good reason to hate those Polish Kapos. To this day I don’t like angora sweaters.

While I worked at the laboratory, I went from being a Zionist to becoming a Communist. Although the word, “Communist” isn’t the right word. I didn’t actually become a member of the party until the beginning of the war; and left it shortly after the war. “Marxist” is a better word, because Marx’s idea, that all people should work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, is actually a good solution; I still think so.