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

by Alice Hoffman

A story could do many things; it could make you see the beauty in the world, it could give you hope when there was none, but in the end a story was only a story. It was not a black moth Anne had been seeing in the corners. It was evil. It was already in their room. The sisters had imagined how they might escape into the forest to a place so deep in the woods they would never be found. They had no idea that at the end of January, the Final Solution had been drawn up at a secret meeting in a suburb of Berlin, where high Nazi officials planned the killing of the eleven million Jews of Europe and beyond, a genocide of such enormous proportions it would destroy an entire race. Anne and Margot had heard the moths at the window, but they still had faith in the future. They still held hands when they said good night. Sleep well, they said, sleep until the morning light, until the future arrives, until we are anywhere but here.