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

There is a day you never forget, the day the whole world changes.

There is a heron sitting on a balcony, a bird that is a sign of good luck. You are wearing two sweaters and a coat though the day is warm. When you see black moths rising from deep underground, you can barely breathe. In this moment, you suddenly realize you may not always be with the ones you love. Something is happening all around you. This is when you understand that the story can change.

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

More than thirty thousand Jewish men were rounded up on Kristallnacht, then arrested and taken to concentration camps; even Anne’s uncle Walter was arrested, though later released.

They were called labor camps, and it was said that those brought there to work would return home when their work was completed, but in time, the Jews in Germany came to realize those who were taken would never come back.

Oma dreamed of broken glass; she heard it shattering in her sleep, and sometimes she spent the night in a chair by the window so that she might keep watch, even though they were no longer in Germany.

Oma had warned her that the worst things happened when you least expected them, they came the way a hard rain fell, when you had your eyes closed, when you were too busy thinking about other things. On an ordinary day, when the weather seemed fine, that’s when it happened, that’s when the whole world changed.

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

“Let’s dream about the future,” Anne suggested. “Fine,” her Oma agreed. She felt better just talking to Anne. How lucky she was to have a granddaughter who had hope. “Let’s do that.” “We’ll be in California,” Anne said. “In a big house by the sea.” “Will we?” Oma laughed, delighted. “I’m bringing you with me,” Anne assured her grandmother. “I’m ready,” Oma said, kissing Anne good night. She could not love her granddaughter more.

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

She had her Oma, but she was also her father’s favorite. She was sure of it, even if he never said so and did his best not to show it. They were two peas in a pod. Pim laughed at Anne’s jokes and appreciated the fact that she yearned for more from life.

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 readin...

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.

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

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.

Anne waved at the birds and whistled a tune. “Hello,” she called out. “Can you teach me to fly?”

Sometimes, Anne felt sorry for her sister. She wondered what it was like to be so good and unquestioning and how it felt to believe everything you were told and never imagine anything brand new.

Being pretty wasn’t everything, but feeling that you were worth something was.

Anne wished that she lived in a bookshop and could read all night long. In every bookshop in Amsterdam there seemed to be a black cat and over nearly every door there was a bell that rang when you walked inside.

Margot added, “It’s so much easier when you do as you’re told.” “I’m sure it is. For you.”

Anne saw not only what was, but what might be. She was beside Margot as they turned the corner, but she already had one foot in the future, ready to leap into the life she wanted, one that was far away from here. She was a magpie, she was an escape artist, and she didn’t intend to stay put and live the life everyone else thought she should. All girls had dreams, and Anne certainly had hers, which she kept secret not only from Margot, but from her closest friends as well.

The inside of the story was the stone that no one could see, hidden in the center, like the pit of a fruit, one so sharp it could cut you if you reached for it. It was tomorrow, and the day after that, and the years that would soon come.

There outside her own home, she had caught a glimpse of the inside of the story, the one their parents didn’t want them to know, the reason fairy tales warn children to beware at every turn. You cannot know when evil will appear. That was the inside of the story, waiting to open like a dark flower. She could only see its shadow from the corner of her eye, a large black moth. She spied it only for an instant, but it was long enough for Anne to tug on her sister’s hand and say Hurry, and then they ran so fast it was almost as if they were flying.

Ever since that time, Anne had seen her parents differently, as a team, two people who had come to an agreement, and even if they weren’t always happy, they would stay together for the sake of the family, and the children, and the household. This was not the sort of marriage Anne wanted when she grew up. She wanted a true love, she wanted to be special, and she wished that her mother wanted that for her too.

The future was right there in front of them and maybe she could fly away as the birds did and have the life that she wanted. All she had to do was wait to grow up, and then she could do whatever she pleased.

Anne’s uncles had settled in Massachusetts, and Anne wished her family had gone there as well, but by the time her father had applied for visas to get them to the States, they were on the waiting list. They were hoping for good news, and Pim always said they would be in America before too long.

Edith Frank didn’t often speak so tenderly. She had always thought it was best to have a tough skin and not show your emotions. That was the way to protect yourself from being hurt.

It seemed rude and unfeeling to Anne that her mother hadn’t even waited for her answer, but Edith simply hadn’t wanted Anne to see there were tears in her eyes. She made a point of never crying in front of her daughters when she feared what the future might be.

Edith prayed that bad fortune would not come anywhere near them, that it would not sit on the roof or reach in through the window or knock on the door.

Their grandmothers were as different as night is from day. Oma was warm and endearing, while Omi was elegant and demanding. Family was everything, their mother often said. They will be there for you when everyone else disappears. Omi had eluded the Nazis by leaving Germany for Basel, Switzerland, and now the sisters barely remembered her house, not even whether or not there had been a garden.

Good people often could not understand why the oldest stories were filled with demons and dangerous beasts. They had no idea that when evil appears, you cannot fight it with arrows or stones. It is invisible and it is everywhere. The first sign is the scent of something burning, as if a fire had been set and the air was filling with black acrid smoke.

“What if we chose wrong?” Anne heard her mother say. “What if we should have gone elsewhere?” “The Netherlands was, is, and always will be a free nation,” Otto replied. “You have to believe in some things. You have to put your faith in what is good.” 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.

Hatred arises so quickly that one drop is all it takes before it spreads like ink on a page. Still, the girls’ father was convinced the rising tide of prejudice against the Jews was a temporary evil stirred up by a few bad people.

when some people are less than others, and only a select few have rights, anyone who doesn’t belong can never be safe.

It happened at dawn, the thing they didn’t expect, the day like no other. All at once it seemed as if a rain of stars had tumbled from the sky. It was three a.m., the hour when the birds were asleep, when the fish in the canals drowsed in the shallows. The racket sounded like hail, and then like stones being thrown. But when the sky lit up, it was because bombs were going off out in the countryside. There were no falling stars—only this, this burst of weapons that dropped from above.

Pim had tuned in to their connection to the world that had not been struck down by the sudden madness outside. They had been overrun by enemy forces.

They were in a panic, that much was clear, speaking in German, as if they had never escaped from their home country, for bad luck and misfortune seemed to have followed them here. 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.

“We will be safe.” “How can you be sure?” Anne asked. “The rest of the world will come to the aid of the Netherlands. It’s illegal for the Germans to be here.” Anne nodded and leaned against her father.

The Franks had no car, and no place to go, so they watched from the windows while the streets backed up with bicyclists and carts as neighbors did their best to escape, their belongings strapped to their backs. What they thought would never happen had happened overnight.

Anne looked up at Margot, who had never appeared more beautiful. She could feel the familiar sting of her own jealousy. Sometimes she wished they could change places. “I would do anything for you,” Margot said with a natural kindness that made Anne even more envious of her sweet nature. “And I’ll always be your sister.”

She hoped that she would always remember this moment when all she felt was love for her sister rather than resentment, when she didn’t care if Margot was the perfect daughter, when it didn’t matter that she was the self-centered one who wanted to fly away over the rooftops, past the canals, past the river and the plane trees, to a world where there was sunshine all year round, where the birds in the trees were the only sound she could hear.

We could not sleep through the night after the bombs had fallen. Our family had scattered all over the world, but we did not fit into the quota of Jews allowed into America or England or Switzerland.

We believed in what was fair. We didn’t understand that hatred changes everything and, in the morning, when we woke, we found we were afraid of the world outside.

The Franks had always imagined that if they ever needed to leave Amsterdam, they could go to stay with Pim’s mother in Basel, but now Switzerland had all but closed its doors to immigrants. There was little hope for anyone attempting to enter Switzerland via the perilous climb through the mountains, and those refugees who managed to slip onto trains were turned back when they arrived at the border, even though it meant certain death to Jews who were forced to return to Germany.

In the evenings, everyone stayed at home. Perhaps that was why there were more and more rabbits, more than they’d ever seen before. They ran through the square in the twilight as if the whole world belonged to them after curfew, as if they hadn’t a worry in the world, unaware that where there are rabbits, there will soon be wolves.

Time is a circle, and what happens in one country can begin in another. Terror can grow beyond borders, a forest of black trees with thorns on every branch.

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?

Edith wondered if their destination had been the wrong choice. Perhaps they had made a terrible mistake coming to Amsterdam. She had begun to think they should have gone to Switzerland as Otto’s mother had, or sent the girls to stay with Otto’s cousins in England—even France might have been better. They had reasoned it out before making their decision, and Otto had thought it best for the family to stay together.