When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

by Alice Hoffman

How wonderful it is that no one has to wait even a minute to start gradually changing the world… —Anne Frank

She didn’t know where Anne got her nerve, and there were times when she wished that she, herself, were a bit braver. She couldn’t remember ever breaking a rule.

Anne knew that even if you were sisters you could see the world in completely different ways. The here and now and the what could be.

Dreams are the beginning, he always told Anne. They’re the stories we tell ourselves.

“Good people cannot understand evil. They don’t even recognize it,” Oma told her granddaughter. “That’s what happened in Germany.”

Although some people felt Anne was too full of herself, Oma knew she was deeply sensitive, possessing a huge compassionate heart that was easily wounded,

Emily

All you needed to believe in yourself was to know that someone loved you, the real you, the you deep inside.

He knew what happened when you did as you were told; you often lost the best part of yourself.

Anne made a face and they both laughed. That was the thing about being someone’s sister. You could hate her and love her at the very same time. You could tell her things you wouldn’t tell anyone else or tell her nothing at all.

You cannot know when evil will appear. That was the inside of the story, waiting to open like a dark flower.

in ancient times salt was given as an offering at the Temple in Jerusalem, for it was thought to heal and purify, and it was a symbol of the eternal. She

“I want to be nice to you,” Margot said. “A sister is more than a friend.”

They felt so far away, even from their neighbors next door.

She was an optimist, a believer in all that was good.

because she had experienced the past. If you have been to a place once, you know it is possible to go there again. Time is a circle, and what happens in one country can begin in another.

Hatred was contagious, it spread from one household to the next, a slow infection of the spirit and the soul.

How do you tell your granddaughter that life can be tragic for no reason? How do you say that to any decent person who wants to believe that life is fair?

When a free independent country is invaded and bombed by another country, it is an act not only of war, but of terror. Shouldn’t the world be up in arms?

“Pay no attention to me,” Oma said whenever she was asked if something was wrong. The truth was, everything was so wrong

she didn’t know where to begin.

One cannot know the future, and it was impossible then to suspect that the Netherlands would have the greatest percentage of Jews murdered of any western European country by the end of the war.

to sleep, she told Anne not to worry, she would be loved forevermore.

Anne realized how important it was to have courage in a world where hope was difficult to hold on to.

Anne loved the Montessori school and felt as if she were being sent into exile.

“Anne, with a book you will never be alone.”

“Good triumphs.” This is what she told herself every morning and every night. It’s what she made herself believe every time she saw the shadow of the moth in the corners of her room. “I’m absolutely sure of it,” she said, more to herself than to her father.

Anne took it as a sign. Blue for happiness, for the good in the world, blue for hope.

She slipped the ribbon into her pocket. It would serve to remind her to look beyond what other people saw, to see light where there was darkness and remember that even though fall was approaching, in time it would once again be spring.

She reminded her that no matter what happened, no matter how difficult life became, Anne would always know she had been loved.

Mama

matter to me?” Anne had never realized how much she yearned for her mother’s approval.

used to have everything,” the bookseller’s wife said. “Now I just have what I can remember.”

He had always been the sort of man who believed that books were as important as food when it came to nourishing a person. It might have been the last belief he managed to hold on to,

Sometimes Anne pretended a star had drifted down from the sky and had been cut into pieces before it was sewn to her, a light that could not be extinguished no matter how hard anyone might try.

She could never explain why she liked to read so much, how healing it was, how

The only difference between reading and being with Hello was that this time they were in this together and she wasn’t alone. They had been to another place where no one could reach them, but they had been there together.

“What does it mean? Darling, it means I would do anything for you. That’s what love is.”

no longer a child. Enjoy every day, live it as if it were your last, don’t think too much about the future or the past, run to meet the boy who is waiting for you in the square, read every book you can, write every night, look at the moonlight, do all that you can to stay alive.

You cannot reason with people who are unreasonable, Oma had once told Anne. You cannot expect the Nazis to act like normal people. Evil people tell themselves a story they come to believe. They tell themselves they are good, and everyone else is inhuman. They tell themselves they are doing what heaven would will them to do.

“We should have done something,” Anne said. “We are doing something.” Anne looked at her mother, confused, but her mother looked sure of herself. “We’re refusing to believe the story they’re telling about us.”

Maybe time would move faster and they would be in a future where there was more kindness than cruelty, where evil was defeated and birds sang in the trees, and a girl could stay out past eight o’clock in the evening without fear that she would be arrested.

and Anne didn’t say anything, but it was true. Whatever else she wanted, she knew that she

wanted to love someone who would love her back, someone who would know her for who she was.

This was the way it was; there were good people and there were evil people; even though you couldn’t tell them apart by sight, you could tell the difference with your heart. You could feel who loved you and who was willing to risk everything to save you.

was so strange that you could be so angry at your mother for so long, and then, all at once, let it go so that every breath you took felt different.

The last moment of anything is one you never forget.

There you still are sitting on your bed, writing, knowing a secret you can tell the world. Love is everything, love is everywhere, it’s the one thing they can never take away from you.

her diary helped me to see that even when there was evil in the world, even when it was impossible to have hope, it was still possible to be brave.

Evil does walk through the world, and it is often undetected until it’s too late, as it was in the Netherlands and throughout Europe.

is a fact that six million Jews died during the Holocaust, known also as the Shoah, the Hebrew word for catastrophe.

Remember us, the diary tells us, in every single line, which is why it should be required reading for every child in America and throughout the world. Remember me.