Seemingly, Anne was happy at Westerbork, despite everything. She could see new people and talk to them, after having been cooped up with the same seven people for over two years. The thought that occupied her mind most of all was whether they would be sent to Poland and whether or not they could live through the trying days ahead. Anne's father would visit her in the women's barracks sometimes in the evenings, standing by her bed and telling her stories. Similarly, when a twelve-year-old boy who lived in the women's barracks fell ill, Anne stood by his bed and talked to him in the same way.
On September 2, Anne, together with the other members of the group in hiding, was gathered into a group of one thousand persons and sent to Germany. They traveled in sealed railway cattle cars, seventy-five people crowded in each car, with only one, small, barred window, high up. The journey took several days, and on the third night, the train suddenly came to a stop. The doors of the car were jerked open, and blazing searchlights, SS men with dogs, and the bustling Kapos (prisoner guards) constituted the prisoners' first glimpse of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the passengers streamed out of the train, the men were ordered to go right, and the women were ordered to go to the left. Children and sick people were told to enter trucks painted with big red crosses to spare them the hour's march to the camp, but the trucks never arrived. The children and sick people who entered them were never seen again.
Anne, her mother, Margot, and Mrs. Van Daan all marched with the rest of the women to the camp, hustled along at a brutal pace by the SS guards and the Kapos. On arrival at the camp, everyone's head was shaved; yet a woman who was with Anne at that time said of Anne; "You could see that her beauty was wholly in her eyes. . . . Her gaiety had vanished, but she was still lively and sweet, and with her charm she sometimes secured things that the rest of us had long since given up hoping for.
