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

by Alice Hoffman

The Netherlands still allowed Jews to enter when other countries, including the United States, had instituted quotas that kept out refugees, even though the conditions for Jews in Germany were worsening as the Nazi persecution grew more ruthless all the time.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to power in the wake of Germany’s loss in World War I, often called the Great War.

By 1940, German Jews were no longer allowed into parks or public schools or markets. Hate had become legal; it was everywhere.

Countries closed their borders, refusing to let Jewish refugees enter; boatloads of people were turned away from the shores of free countries and many had no chance to survive.

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

He was a voracious reader and was proud that Anne was as well, even if that meant staying up late and breaking the rules. Pim influenced her greatly, especially when it came to reading, which he always said was never a waste of time.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a great believer in social justice, and who, from the beginning of the Nazi regime, had asked for aid for Jewish refugees. As far back as 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt had tried to persuade the government to pass a bill that would have allowed twenty thousand German Jewish refugee children to enter the States, but the bill was ignored and never voted on, and the children had not been allowed into the country. Later, most were taken to death camps and murdered. In the Nazi regime, age meant nothing, humanity meant nothing, love meant nothing.

Just don’t fly away, Pim often teased Anne when she was daydreaming, and she would grin because that was exactly what she planned to do someday.

The Franks had come here because it was one of the most tolerant countries in Europe with a long history of freedom and acceptance, having been neutral during the Great War. “We’ll be safe there,” Otto Frank had told his family and friends, and everyone had agreed. Why should they have any doubts?

Hatred arises so quickly that one drop is all it takes before it spreads like ink on a page.

Of the nearly fifty thousand Jews who had applied to move to the Netherlands, trying to escape the chaos in Germany, only twenty-five thousand had been allowed to enter, not as citizens but as refugees, lost souls without a country of their own. That was what the sisters were now, only they didn’t know it yet. They were outsiders here in Amsterdam, and when some people are less than others, and only a select few have rights, anyone who doesn’t belong can never be safe.

The roar that at first appeared to be thunder was the sound of German bombers flying over Amsterdam on their way to bomb the airport.

The Netherlands was a neutral country that did not hold itself to be a part of any ongoing war. Germany had ignored that status and had attacked anyway.

The queen denounced Adolf Hitler as the archenemy of mankind and vowed she would return, but for now the Dutch were at the mercy of the Germans, who were stronger with a huge, well-trained army.

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

People wondered if soon enough, Jews would not be allowed into their own gardens; if they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the flowers they had grown or walk outside to see the moon.

They studied everyone they came upon with a cool glance, wary, checking for what they considered to be Jewish features—dark hair, dark eyes, individuals they thought were shifty and racially inferior. In the neighborhood, everyone did their best to avoid the soldiers; they crossed the street so they wouldn’t be asked any questions. People whispered that lists had already been drawn up by the Germans with the names of Dutch Jews to arrest, from the radicals to the wealthy to writers and teachers.

Otto Frank continued to write letters trying to get them out of the Netherlands, but as he wrote there was a dark cast of fear on his face.

You can love someone who doesn’t understand you. That’s what Anne had decided. You can trust them more than anyone else.

In Poland, 3.3 million Jews were residents in 1939, and by the end of the war little more than three hundred and fifty thousand survived.

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.

What happened once can happen again, even if you lock your doors, even if you’re honest and fair and have obeyed all the rules.

No country wanted Jewish refugees.

This was the way you learned about the world your parents thought they were protecting you from. You found out on your own. You looked and you saw what was behind everything they told you.

When you were an outcast, you only talked to people you knew. You kept to yourself. You made certain to speak quietly when you were outside, or not to speak at all. Beautiful girls made themselves look plain; they wore gray clothes and no makeup and they didn’t lift their eyes when they passed by the soldiers. Women left their babies home alone rather than taking them into the street, where they might be grabbed from their arms. People waited for the next laws against the Jews the way farmers wait for a storm.

That summer the government announced that Jewish children would be forced to go to separate schools. Children all over the city were in shock, bewildered at the way their lives were disrupted as they were separated from the teachers and friends they were so attached to. No matter where in the city they lived, they would all be sent to Jewish schools; they would no longer be allowed to attend any of the public or private schools that Christians attended.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who realized that her mother loved her. It happened suddenly, it happened in the kitchen, when it was so late the sun would soon be rising. From now on she would try to remember that.

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.

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.

Was this the way the world was supposed to be? Anne believed in faith and loyalty, she believed that people got what they deserved, but who deserved what was happening now?

Wealthy Sephardic Jews had been especially targeted by the Germans, who wished to take their property and belongings, and now many were homeless; some lived in the stables and cellars of their onetime employees who were kind enough to take them in.

“Would you burn birds in a cage?” she asked Anne. “Of course not.” Anne thought of the magpie. She thought of the soldiers shooting at whatever they saw, just for fun. “And yet they burn books. They throw them into metal trash cans and light a fire and then all the words that had been written fly away.” “What happens to the words then?” Anne asked. “They’re remembered by everyone who ever read them.”

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, one he refused to give up. He

They were passing the Blankevoort Bookstore. There in the window was the checked journal Anne so wanted. She always stopped and stared at it, as she did now.

She didn’t tell Anne about the remarks German soldiers sometimes made as she walked by. Terrible things. Things that made it impossible to dream and made her feel that it wasn’t safe to be a woman.

He was the first person to say he loved her, and when she walked beside him her heart beat faster, too fast, she thought sometimes.

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.

All that Anne knew was that every morning Hello was waiting for her at the bicycle shed, and they walked and talked as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. Perhaps that was what it meant to be in love.

The first present Anne saw was the diary she’d wished for from Blankevoort, the bookstore nearby, and she was utterly delighted to know that Pim had remembered how much she’d wanted it.

That was the power of writing, Anne realized, it could make people understand you, it could bring them over to your side, it could show them you were more than a silly girl who couldn’t stop talking.

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.

They didn’t even have time to be young and they knew it.

He didn’t tell her that he had heard that on Friday, the 26th of June, the Jewish Council had been told that all Jews between the ages of sixteen and forty would be sent to work camps in Germany. It began with little more than three hundred taken for the camps each day, but that was only the beginning. More and more people were called up every day.

Love took time and choosing the right person did too.

Margot had heard rumors about what it meant to be called up by a government order. They had all heard the rumors. They would be told they would return, but most vanished and never did.

“It was for me,” Margot said. She looked paler than ever; she looked like a shadow in a dream. “I’m the one who’s been called up for a labor camp.”

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.

Anne was not allowed to say goodbye to anyone; it was too dangerous. She merely vanished. The next day, her friends Hanneli and Jacque would arrive to find her gone. They phoned and hoped she would send them a letter or a secret note, but there was nothing. Hello never went back, and Anne wouldn’t have expected him to.

The hiding place wasn’t far away, it wasn’t by the seaside or on a farm. It was in her father’s brick office building at 263 Prinsengracht. There were two empty floors that had mostly been unused. This was the place that Otto had been secretly readying in case of an emergency and a day he’d hoped would never come.

She felt a pain in her chest, and each breath was difficult. She wanted the life she’d had. She wanted the world to stay the same. She wanted good to win over evil and monsters to be trapped and kept locked up in chains.