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ANNE'S FLAME Anne’s honest words of innocence fill her pages with such great truthfulness, one almost feels voyeuristic reading them. Mesmerizing us with her weaving of everyday simplicity and youthful purity into observations and perceptions insightful enough to live by! Her favorite possession a fountain pen, what a harmonic tool in her hands, reflecting man’s darkest days as friends and acquaintances simply disappear… For twenty five strained months Anne and seven Jewish fugitives hide from brown shirted thugs. Here we watch Anne begin her war on fascism. She knew her enemy well and there were no surprises in store. She wrote of the ‘march of death’ through Dutch streets, watching from behind the curtains as the lifeless eyes of the young, old, infant, and infirmed were mercilessly herded to Westerbrook, and the heartless death trains heading east. Anne, living behind the cupboard asked, “If Dutch sons are being enslaved, what are they doing to Jews? Murder, I suppose.†She relates her life of rules, rats, yellow stars, discomforts after discomfort in cramped routine, of silence and meager meals, persecution, and prejudice, all with no hint of malevolence, just words of gratitude and guilt. Thanking a God gone missing for their suffering so little, comparatively…. Daily dangers, dwindling food stores and nightly nerve shattering, either by British bombings, burglars, rats, sirens, or machine gun fire. The world’s dirtiest tricks continually assault the fragile sanctuary as the eight struggle to get along, as well as to survive. Her gentility and maturation under these extremes, all the more impressive, as we watch a beautiful woman emerge suddenly from impossibility! Then, towards the end, her sage statements on war, life, death, religion, nature, and society, speak of wisdom that greatly surpass her meek and mere fifteen years of age. She escaped oppressive confinement through an appreciation of nature few have ever matched. She lived nature whenever she stole a breath of fresh air, an eyeful of blue sky, a tree top blowing, a crescent moon or a sparrow’s song. She could grab on to nature when most would see only a gray and depressing void. She began falling in love towards the end and it so lifted her spirits (and mine), she had found a brief spark, even as seven other wills wore down. Her first kiss was her last kiss…. Treacherous cowards stormed in at night, greedily looting the pitiful valuables and negligently throwing Anne’s priceless words on the floor, where they would be found! Of all the world’s tragic injustices, surely none were worse than Anne’s being aboard the very last torture train from Holland! Cattle cars crammed with Jews heading east towards the mass graves, packed so tightly with corpses, souls had to struggle just to escape this most grotesque of scenes. Hungry crematoriums full afire, choking the lungs of the skeletal survivors, would be her final visions of life… After a month in Auschwitz where no soul as tender as hers could continue to fight on, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where, racked with disease, starvation and lice, her will’s strength and courage, finally gave out… She once wrote “I want to live after death†and yet today, her words burn as bright as any flame! She does live on, and may her candle of love, burn brightly forever. |
Additional Notes:
May 3rd 1944
Anne Frank asks herself what is the use of war why cant people live in peace.
She asks why people starve while some food rots.
She then answers herself -
“ I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and capitalists alone, are guilty of the war. Oh no, the little man is just as guilty, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There’s in people simply an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.â€
These words were written by a girl not yet 16 yrs. old
This Poem was Critiqued By: Claire H. Currier On Date: 2006-12-05 19:02:13
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.50000
I remember seeing the movie quite some time ago and this poem is a super reflection on the girl herself.........certainly her light still burns and will most likely remain alive forever. Good structure, word flow, images, filled with emotions and so much more. Thanks again and God Bless, Claire